Network Structure and the Aggregation of Information: Theory and Evidence from Indonesia

By Vivi Alatas, Abhijit Banerjee, Arun G. Chandrasekhar, Rema Hanna, Benjamin A. Olken. 2016

160 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We use unique data from 600 Indonesian communities on what individuals know about the poverty status of others to study how network structure influences information aggregation. We develop a model of semi-Bayesian learning on networks, which we structurally estimate using within-village data. The model generates qualitative predictions about how cross-village patterns of learning relate to different network structures, which we show are borne out in the data. We apply our findings to a community-based targeting program, where villagers chose which households should receive aid, and show that networks the model predicts to be more diffusive differentially benefit from community targeting.

Subfields: Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/e8a01f57d119e1acd77c95853e62932ffec1272b

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Economics and Econometrics

1. Arun G. Chandrasekhar
2. Pablo Querubin
3. Cesi Cruz
4. Julien Labonne
5. Emily Breza
6. Stuti Khemani

In Safety Research

1. Arun G. Chandrasekhar
2. Julien Labonne
3. Emily Breza
4. Stuti Khemani

In Sociology and Political Science

1. Arun G. Chandrasekhar
2. Pablo Querubin
3. Cesi Cruz
4. Julien Labonne
5. Emily Breza

Citations in the corpus

• Politician Family Networks and Electoral Outcomes: Evidence from the Philippines (2017, background): “…in various contexts (Jackson, 2014; Munshi, 2014).3 In particular, networks have been linked to the diffusion of information (Banerjee et al., 2013; Alatas et al., 2016; Larson and Lewis, 2017), conflict outcomes (König et al., forthcoming) and the broader mechanisms of political control (Puga and…”
• Social Networks, Reputation, and Commitment: Evidence From a Savings Monitors Experiment (2019, background): “Second, the work of Alatas et al. (2012) examines how well individuals are able to rank others’ wealth in their communities.”
• The Economic Consequences of Social Network Structure (2017, unknown): “This conclusion has recently been established for a variety of diffusion processes (Jackson and Rogers (2007b), Lopez-Pintado (2008)) and confirmed via careful statistical analyses of some processes in field studies of learning and diffusion (e.g., Alatas et al. (2016)).”