Giorgio Topa

TL;DR: In this paper, a model that explicitly incorporates local interactions and allows agents to exchange information about job openings within their social networks is presented, where agents are more likely to be employed if their social contacts are also employed.

TL;DR: In this article, the effect of social interactions among neighbors on labor market outcomes is investigated using Census data that characterize residential and employment locations down to the city block, and whether individuals residing in the same block are more likely to work together than those in nearby blocks.

TL;DR: In this article, the effect of social interactions on labor market outcomes was empirically analyzed using Census data on residential and employment locations, and the authors found evidence of significant social interactions.

Abstract: Subsidized loans have a history of being diverted to the rich. Yet recently microcredit programs, such as the Grameen Bank in Bangladesh, have become popular among donors and governments as a way to channel funds to the poor. This paper uses a unique panel dataset from two Bangladeshi villages to test if the modern microcredit movement is different from its predecessors. Poverty is measured by levels of consumption. Vulnerability is measured as fluctuations in consumption associated with inefficient risk sharing. We find that subsidized credit is largely successful at reaching the poor and vulnerable. The probability that a microcredit member is below the poverty line is substantially higher than that of a randomly picked household in both villages. In the village where female headed households were found to be vulnerable, nearly half of the female headed households belonged to microcredit programs yet only a quarter of male headed households were microcredit members. While restricting loans to the landless is not effective in reaching the poor and vulnerable, targeting female headed households is.

TL;DR: This paper examined the spatial patterns of unemployment in Chicago between 1980 and 1990 and found that there is a strong positive and statistically significant degree of spatial dependence in the distribution of raw unemployment rates.