000294128 001__ 294128 000294128 005__ 20250213113308.0 000294128 037__ $$aBOOK 000294128 245__ $$aDoes ethnic diversity decrease economic interactions? Evidence from exchange networks in rural Gambia 000294128 260__ $$aMunich$$bMPRA$$c2014 000294128 269__ $$a2014 000294128 300__ $$a40 000294128 336__ $$aPapers and Reports 000294128 490__ $$aMPRA Paper ; No. 60497 000294128 520__ $$aUsing a unique dataset collected in 59 rural Gambian villages, we study how ethnic heterogeneity is related to the structure of four economic exchange networks: land, labor, inputs and credit. We find that different measures of village-level ethnic fragmentation are mostly uncorrelated with network structure. At a more disaggregated level, household heads belonging to ethnic minorities are not less central than those from the predominant ethnicity in any of the networks and, at the dyadic level, the fact that two households share ethnicity is not an economically significant predictor of link formation. Our results indicate that, in the particular setting of our study, the structure of the exchange networks is better defined by other variables than ethnicity, and that ethnic heterogeneity is unlikely to be a driver for sub-optimal economic exchanges. We argue that our findings can be interpreted in a causal way as the current distribution of ethnic groups in rural Gambia is largely influenced by specific historical features of the British colonial administration. Moreover, the network structure of our data allow us to include fixed effects at different levels as well as to precisely measure kinship ties, a confounding variable often omitted in previous studies. 000294128 700__ $$aArcand, Jean-Louis L 000294128 700__ $$aJaimovich, Dany 000294128 8564_ $$9bd152e2c-a1d5-45d1-ae2e-a3d6c0f3de85$$s711950$$uhttps://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/294128/files/MPRA_paper_60497_arcand_2014.pdf 000294128 8564_ $$92b87aece-863a-4a15-bc53-1cd2442e5ac7$$xpdfa$$s1856599$$uhttps://repository.graduateinstitute.ch/record/294128/files/MPRA_paper_60497_arcand_2014.pdf?subformat=pdfa 000294128 901__ $$uInternational Economics Department$$0319285 000294128 909CO $$ooai:repository.graduateinstitute.ch:294128$$pIHEID:Infonet$$pGLOBAL_SET$$pIHEID:Infonet_CFD$$pIHEID:Infonet_IE_2$$pIHEID:Infonet_CTEI$$pIHEID:Infonet_CCDP$$pIHEID:Explore$$pIHEID:Infonet_IE 000294128 937__ $$aWP-2016-049 000294128 980__ $$aINFONET 000294128 980__ $$aWP