This paper uses a dataset fromTanzania with information on consumption, income and income shocks within and across family networks. Crucially and uniquely, it also contains data on the degree of information existing between each pair of households within family networks. We use these data to construct a novel measure of the quality of information both at the level of household pairs and at the level of the network.We also note that the individual level measures can be interpreted as measures of network centrality. We study risk sharing within these networks and explore whether the rejection of perfect risk sharing that we observe can be related to our measures of information quality. We show that households within family networks with better information are less vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks. Furthermore, we show that more central households within networks are less vulnerable to idiosyncratic shocks. These results have important implications for the characterisation of the empirical failure of the perfect risk sharing hypothesis and point to the importance of information frictions. (JEL: D15, D52, D82)

中文翻译：

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信息不对称网络中的消费保险：来自坦桑尼亚的证据

本文使用了来自坦桑尼亚的数据集，该数据集包含有关家庭网络内部和跨家庭网络的消费，收入和收入冲击的信息。至关重要且独特的是，它还包含有关家庭网络中每对家庭之间存在的信息程度的数据。我们使用这些数据构建了一种新的衡量住户对水平和网络水平的信息质量的方法。我们还注意到，个人水平的度量可以解释为网络中心度的度量。我们研究了这些网络中的风险分担，并探讨了我们观察到的对完美风险分担的拒绝是否可能与我们的信息质量度量有关。我们显示，家庭网络中拥有更好信息的家庭不易遭受特质冲击。此外，我们表明，网络中更多的中央家庭不易受到特质冲击的影响。这些结果对完美风险分担假设的经验失败的表征具有重要意义，并指出了信息摩擦的重要性。（JEL：D15，D52，D82）