We investigate whether social structure hinders factor allocation using unusually rich
data from The Gambia. We find evidence of a smoking gun: land available for cultivation
is allocated unequally across households; and factor transfers are more common between
neighbors, co-ethnics, and kin. Can we conclude that the former is due to the latter? To
answer this question we introduce a novel methodology that approaches exhaustive data
on dyadic flows from an aggregate point of view. We find that land transfers lead to a more
equal distribution of land and to more comparable factor ratios across farms. But most
types of equalizing transfers of land are not more likely within ethnic or kinship groups.
We conclude that a smoking gun approach would have been misleading in our study,
wrongly concluding that ethnic and kinship divisions hinder land and labor transfers in a
way that contributes to factor inequality