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来源类型 | Working Paper |
规范类型 | 报告 |
DOI | 10.3386/w20600 |
来源ID | Working Paper 20600 |
Saving for a (not so) Rainy Day: A Randomized Evaluation of Savings Groups in Mali | |
Lori Beaman; Dean Karlan; Bram Thuysbaert | |
发表日期 | 2014-10-20 |
出版年 | 2014 |
语种 | 英语 |
摘要 | High transaction and contracting costs are often thought to create credit and savings market failures in developing countries. The microfinance movement grew largely out of business process innovations and subsidies that reduced these costs. We examine an alternative approach, one that infuses no external capital and introduces no change to formal contracts: an improved "technology" for managing informal, collaborative village-based savings groups. Such groups allow, in theory, for more efficient and lower- cost loans and informal savings, and in practice have been scaled up by international non-profit organizations to millions of members. Individuals save together and then lend the accumulated funds back out to themselves. In a randomized evaluation in Mali, we find improvements in food security, consumption smoothing, and buffer stock savings. Although we do find suggestive evidence of higher agricultural output, we do not find overall higher income or expenditure. We also do not find downstream impacts on health, education, social capital, and female decision-making power. Could this have happened before, without any external intervention? Yes. That is what makes the result striking, that indeed there were no resources provided nor legal institutional changes, yet the NGO-guided, improved informal processes led to important changes for households. |
主题 | Microeconomics ; Households and Firms ; Behavioral Economics ; Development and Growth ; Development |
URL | https://www.nber.org/papers/w20600 |
来源智库 | National Bureau of Economic Research (United States) |
引用统计 | |
资源类型 | 智库出版物 |
条目标识符 | http://119.78.100.153/handle/2XGU8XDN/578274 |
推荐引用方式 GB/T 7714 | Lori Beaman,Dean Karlan,Bram Thuysbaert. Saving for a (not so) Rainy Day: A Randomized Evaluation of Savings Groups in Mali. 2014. |
条目包含的文件 | 条目无相关文件。 |
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