Missing Links, Missing Markets: Evidence of the Transformation Process in the Economic Networks of Gambian Villages

The aim of this paper is to contribute to the empirical analysis of the transformation process in traditional rural societies using a network perspective. A unique database collected in 60 villages in rural Gambia is used to study the ways in which households with links outside the village (a proxy for market connections) behave in the locally available exchange networks for land, labor, inputs, and credit. The econometric results at different levels of disaggregation provide suggestive evidence of substitutability between internal and external economic interactions, particularly in the case of reciprocal exchanges.