Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effects of Identity and Social Networks on Investment and Market Participation Behavior: An Analysis from Rural South India

博士论文研究：身份和社会网络对投资和市场参与行为的影响：来自南印度农村的分析0649330号提案PI：Christopher B.Barrett co-PiAnnemie Maerten这项实地研究使用了印度马哈拉施特拉邦和安德拉邦六个村庄的数据，定量分析了身份和社会网络对教育投资、农业技术采用和市场参与决策的影响，并沿着路径(社会学习、歧视、社会规范、模仿、价格规模效应和对代理人资源约束的影响)区分了这些影响。在1975-1985年期间，ICRISAT曾在其村级研究中对选定进行这项研究的村庄进行过研究，因此可以获得关于家庭和村级特征的详细背景资料和数据。因此，本文的研究解决了发展经济学文献中的一个重要空白。最近的经济学研究承认(非生产性)身份和社会网络在经济决策中的重要性。社会网络和身份认同通过对偏好、限制和期望的影响，调节从资源到结果的映射，从而影响经济决策，如对儿童教育的投资、技术采用决策和市场参与决策。然而，现有的研究都没有按照以下途径区分这些影响：从一个人的联系人那里学习(通常被称为社会学习)、歧视(即，对于不同基于身份的群体的成员来说，价格或获得某些商品的机会是不同的)、价格-规模效应(即，商品的价值/成本取决于用户的数量)、社会规范(即，在特定地区通过制裁在社会上强制执行的规则)、模仿(即，模仿某人观察到的特定人的行为)、以及减轻劳动，资金和信贷限制(例如，朋友和家人在收获期间伸出援手，借出机器或提供贷款)。从政策的角度来看，从政策的角度区分这些影响是重要的，因为这是刺激教育投资的正确战略，增加和更快地采用有前途的技术，市场参与基本上取决于家庭一级的决策过程的结构。具体地说，这项研究的目标有三个：第一，通过引入一套相对较新的数据收集技术，促进发展经济学领域的方法论发展，例如1)样本内随机技术，即随机样本中的个人与同一样本中的其他个人随机匹配，并询问他们过去和现在的联系，他们是否愿意与他/她建立(假设的)联系，以及他们对他/她的能力和社会和文化属性的看法；2)收集关于主观期望的信息，以及3)通过进行小实验来调动信息的能力；第二，制定识别战略，区分数据中不同的社会网络和身份影响；第三，公开数据和数据收集方法，从而确保这项研究的政策影响超出印度案例的范围。

Doctoral Dissertation Research: The Effects of Identity and Social Networks on Investment and Market Participation Behavior: An Analysis from Rural South IndiaProposal No. 0649330 PI: Christopher B. Barrett CO-PI Annemie Maertens This field dissertation research analyzes quantitatively the effects of identity and social network on educational investment, agricultural technology adoption and market participation decisions and differentiates these effects along pathways (social learning, discrimination, social norms, imitation, price-scale effects and effects on the agent's resource constraints) using data from six villages in the Indian states of Maharashtra and Andhra Pradesh. The villages selected for this study have been studied before by ICRISAT in its Village Level Studies (VLS) during the period 1975-1985, and as such detailed background information and data on both household and village level characteristics are available. This dissertation research thereby addresses an important gap in the development economics literature. Recent studies in economics acknowledge the importance of (non-productive) identity and social networks in economic decision-making. Social networks and identity mediate the mapping from resources into outcomes through their effects on preferences, constraints and expectations, thereby influencing economic decisions such as investment in children's education, technology adoption decisions and market participation decisions. However, none of the existing studies have differentiated these effects along the following pathways: learning from one's contacts (often referred to as social learning), discrimination (i.e., prices or access to certain goods is different for members of different identity-based groups), price-scale effects (i.e., the value/cost of a good depends on the number of users), social norms (i.e., a rule in a certain locality that is socially enforced through sanctions), imitation (i.e., copying the actions of certain people one observes), and easing of labor, capital and credit constraints (e.g., friends and family give a helping hand on the land during harvest, lend machinery or provide loans). Differentiating these effects along these different pathways is important from a policy perspective as the right strategy to stimulate educational investment, increased and quicker uptake of promising technologies, and market participation depends fundamentally on the structure of the decision process at the household level. Concretely, the goal of this research is threefold: first, to contribute to the methodological development of the field of development economics by introducing a set of relatively new data-collection techniques, such as 1) the within-sample random technique where individuals who are part of a random sample are randomly matched with other individuals within the same sample and asked about past and present links, their willingness to establish a (hypothetical) link with him/her and their perception of his/her ability and social and cultural attributes and 2) the collection of information on subjective expectations and 3) the capacity to mobilize information by conducting small experiments; second, to develop an identification strategy to separate out the different social network and identity effects in the data; and third, to make the data and the data collection methodology publicly available, thereby ensuring that the policy implications of this study extend beyond the Indian case.