Abstract
Strong kinship structures correspond to important informal institutions that provide some social insurance to businesses in developing economies. More specifically, we posit that, during an economic crisis, businesses located in areas characterised by an in-group supporting marriage tradition (cousin marriage) will experience weaker negative effects on their profitability. We speculate that the cousin marriage tradition is associated with dense structures of kinship-based contacts between individuals, which creates the basis for effective social sanctions that support the cooperation needed during crises. Such structures may enhance the resilience of the local social systems; and local businesses may draw on local, socially available resources, which will attenuate the impact of crises on their financial performance. We utilise the data from the 2018–2019 Nigeria Living Standard Survey and find support for our hypotheses.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Article number | 106910 |
| Number of pages | 14 |
| Journal | World Development |
| Volume | 188 |
| Early online date | 26 Dec 2024 |
| DOIs | |
| Publication status | Published - Apr 2025 |
Bibliographical note
Copyright © 2024 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier Ltd. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.Data Access Statement
Data will be made available on request.Keywords
- SMEs
- Performance
- Economic crisis
- Informal institutions
- Africa
- Nigeria
- Cousin marriage
- Resiliance