Essays on Field Experiments in Developing Countries

This dissertation consists of three chapters based on field experiments carried out in Malawi and Kenya. I use field experiments to uncover the role of social interactions in individual decisions to test for HIV, purchase index based weather insurance and the impact of reducing out-of-pocket schooling costs for children on short and long term schooling outcomes.;Chapter 1, entitled 'Social Networks and Individual Reproductive Decision Making' uses a field experiment to examine the role that social networks play in individuals' decision to get tested for HIV. Early diagnosis of HIV infection provides access to antiretroviral therapy that can reduce morbidity and prolong life, however fear of the stigma of being identified with HIV is a frequently attributed barrier to people learning their HIV status. I develop a simple model that incorporates stigma into individuals' decision to get tested. Stigma arises from individuals revealing their intrinsic value of testing since individuals who have a high intrinsic value from testing implicitly acknowledge having engaged in risky behaviour that put them at risk of infection. Much of this behaviour is socially sanctioned. The model implies that individuals' probability of getting tested should be increasing in the extrinsic incentives that they receive to get tested. The model further predicts that social contacts who get tested at the lowest experimental payoff have a negative effect on individuals' probability of testing since they expose agents to stigma. A third prediction of the model is that each additional dollar that social contacts receive to get tested attenuates the negative effect their testing has on individuals' likelihood of getting tested. I test the model using a unique dataset with the nearly complete social networks of individuals in 21 villages in Central Malawi. The experiment provides two sources of random variation: first in who in the network gets tested and second, in their extrinsic motivation to get tested. Consistent with my model's predictions, I find that individuals' probability of getting tested is increasing in their own payment to test. Secondly, I find a significantly negative peer effect of having a social contact that gets tested with a low experimental payoff and that each additional dollar received by a social contact to get tested mitigates this negative effect. These findings are robust to looking separately at male and female contacts and comparing peers and relatives. My results suggest that stigma matters for individuals' decision to get tested and further that stigma has negative externalities in social networks.;Chapter 2 (coauthored with David K. Evans and Michael Kremer) evaluates the impact of an educational intervention in which a Kenyan non-governmental organization reduces out-of-pocket schooling costs for children in poor communities. School uniforms, the single highest schooling expenditure in that area, were provided to certain children, using a lottery to determine who would receive uniforms. We use winning the lottery as an instrumental variable to identify the impact of receiving a uniform and find that giving a school uniform reduces school absenteeism by 50% for the average student. We find some evidence of increased test scores in the short run, but little evidence of sustained test score impacts. Eight years after the program began, the program still resulted in mildly positive effects for the poorest children.;Chapter 3 (coauthored with Xavier Gino and Dean Karian), presents a randomized field experiment that measures the direct impact and social network spillovers of providing financial literacy and discount vouchers on farmers' decision to purchase drought insurance. We find suggestive evidence that social networks play an important role on farmers' decision to purchase drought insurance. Receiving a financial literacy materials when many of a farmer's neighbours also receive them increases the likelihood that a farmer will purchase insurance while in contrast receiving financial literacy materials in when only a few of a farmer's neighbours receive them decreases the likelihood that a farmer will purchase insurance. Our results imply that financial literacy materials are efficacious in encouraging take-up when farmers' social contacts similarly receive access to financial literacy materials.