Arun Chandrasekhar

Biography

I am an assistant professor at the economics department at stanford university. i work on development economics. i study the role that social networks play in developing countries. a social network is a web of connections between units, such as financial relationships between households in a village. developing countries are marked by a lack well-functioning formal institutions. for instance, village farmers often don't have access to banks, insurance and court systems may not work well. as a consequence, individuals come to rely on their social networks to mediate and facilitate economic interactions. i am particularly interested in how the economics of networks can help us understand information aggregation failures and breakdown of cooperation in the developing world.

Research Interest

Social Networks