TY  - RPRT
        AU  - Chaurey, Ritam
AU  - Nayyar, Guarav
AU  - Sharma, Siddharth
AU  - Verhoogen, Eric
        TI  - Social Learning among Urban Manufacturing Firms: Energy-Efficient Motors in Bangladesh
        PY  - 2025/Oct/
        PB  - Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)
        CY  - Bonn
        T2  - IZA Discussion Paper
        IS  - 18183
        UR  - https://www.iza.org/index.php/publications/dp18183
        AB  - Knowledge spillovers among firms are widely viewed as a key driver of agglomeration and growth, but are difficult to estimate cleanly. We randomly allocated an energy-efficient motor – a “servo'” motor – among leather-goods firms in Dhaka, Bangladesh, and tracked adoption, information flows, beliefs about energy savings, and other variables. We use the difference between actual exposure and expected exposure (from simulated randomization draws) to identify the effect of exposure. We find a robust positive effect of exposure to treated neighbors within a small geographic area (500 meters in our baseline specification) on information flows and adoption. A marginal value of public funds (MVPF) calculation taking learning spillovers into account yields a significantly larger value than one considering only treated firms and suggests that adoption subsidies would be a cost-effective policy intervention.
        KW  - knowledge spillovers
KW  - social learning
KW  - technology adoption
KW  - energy efficiency
        ER  -