Abstract

Do policy interventions disrupt social networks? We study how a job-search assistance intervention in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia, affects the job-search partners of programme participants. We find that the partners of treated participants reduce their job search efforts compared to the partners of untreated jobseekers. This is not because they receive more information about vacancies from their treated friends. On the contrary, we document less information sharing between job-search partners. We present suggestive evidence that this may be because cooperation in job search becomes harder when one jobseeker has access to more resources than the other.

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