TY - UNPB

T1 - Social Interactions in Growing Bananas

T2 - Evidence from a Tanzanian Village

AU - Van Den Broeck, Katleen

AU - Dercon, Stefan

N1 - JEL Classification: O12, O13, O55, Q12

PY - 2007

Y1 - 2007

N2 - This paper analyses whether agricultural information flows give rise to social learning effects in banana cultivation in Nyakatoke, a small Tanzanian village. Based on a village census, full information is available on socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmer kinship members, neighbours and informal insurance group members. This allows a test for social learning within these groups and the identification of different types of social effects. Controlling for exogenous group characteristics, the effect of group behaviour on individual farmer output is studied. The results show that social effects are strongly dependent on the definition of the reference group. It emerges that no social effects are found in distance based groups, exogenous social effects linked to group education exist in informal insurance groups, and only kinship related groups generate the endogenous social effects that produce positive externalities in banana output

AB - This paper analyses whether agricultural information flows give rise to social learning effects in banana cultivation in Nyakatoke, a small Tanzanian village. Based on a village census, full information is available on socio-economic characteristics and banana production of farmer kinship members, neighbours and informal insurance group members. This allows a test for social learning within these groups and the identification of different types of social effects. Controlling for exogenous group characteristics, the effect of group behaviour on individual farmer output is studied. The results show that social effects are strongly dependent on the definition of the reference group. It emerges that no social effects are found in distance based groups, exogenous social effects linked to group education exist in informal insurance groups, and only kinship related groups generate the endogenous social effects that produce positive externalities in banana output

KW - Faculty of Social Sciences

KW - social interaction

KW - social learning

KW - agricultural information networks

M3 - Working paper

BT - Social Interactions in Growing Bananas

PB - Department of Economics

CY - Cph.

ER -