OVERCOMING SOCIAL PREFERENCES IN KNOWLEDGE DISSEMINATION

IFPRI will continue with its AMD (Applied Microeconomics and Development) Seminar Series on Wednesday, April 24 at 12:00pm EST. Maitreesh Ghatak of the London School of Economics will present on how incentive pay can help overcome social preferences in the dissemination of information.

Ghatak will discuss results from the paper Motivating Knowledge Agents: Can Incentive Pay Overcome Social Distance? This paper examines results from a randomized field experiment conducted in 115 villages in South India. In this experiment, local agents were hired to disseminate information regarding a public health insurance program. The authors found that, compared with flat pay rates, incentive pay rates improved how well agents transmitted information to households that were socially distant from that agent.

The AMD Seminar Series is designed to provide a forum for researchers to present high-quality applied microeconomics and development work. Seminars are held on the first Thursday of each month at the IFPRI home office in Washington DC. (It should be noted that the April 24 seminar deviates from this schedule.) To RSVP for this or future seminars, please contact Sarah Dalane (s.dalane@cgiar.org) or Alexandria Cannon (a.cannon@cgiar.org).