Description
- Abstract:
- Human interactions play a vital role in the economy and society at large. In three dissertation chapters, I investigate how the degree of coordination between economic actors can hinder or foster economic prosperity. In chapter 1, I explore the mechanisms behind an anti-poverty program that I helped fund and implement in Malawi. I demonstrate that potential gains from the program are not realized due to a lack of coordination between poverty alleviation and public health efforts. Despite the lack of health impacts, the program is able to lift households out of poverty and could be made 40% cheaper by omitting the public health components -- a vital gain for reaching more in-need families. In chapter 2, I document how our ability to successfully scale up this anti-poverty program hinges on whether we are able to get budding entrepreneurs to coordinate which sector of the economy they enter. Failure to do so would lead to intense sectoral concentration in which many of these households would remain trapped in extreme poverty since the demand for products in their local villages simply cannot sustain too many similar firms. In chapter 3, I offer a historical perspective on the role of coordination in creating prosperity. I study how villages in colonial Kenya coordinated the schedules of their weekly markets in order to increase cross-attendance. The resulting flows of traders help explain which villages later became the major trading hubs. I showcase that the study area would have likely seen fewer, larger markets if road infrastructure and marketplace investment had been better coordinated.
- Notes:
- Thesis (Ph. D.)--Brown University, 2026
Citation
Poll, Moritz,
"Coordination and Prosperity: Poverty Alleviation and Agricultural Markets in Sub-Saharan Africa"
(2026).
Economics Theses and Dissertations.
Brown Digital Repository. Brown University Library.
https://repository.library.brown.edu/studio/item/bdr:7a4fzthq/
