We designed a commitment savings product for a Philippine bank and implemented it using a randomized control methodology. The savings product was intended for individuals who want to commit now to restrict access to their savings, and who were sophisticated enough to engage in such a mechanism. We conducted a baseline survey on 1777 existing or former clients of a bank. One month later, we offered the commitment product to a randomly chosen subset of 710 clients; 202 (28.4 percent) accepted the offer and opened the account. In the baseline survey, we asked hypothetical time discounting questions. Women who exhibited a lower discount rate for future relative to current tradeoffs, and hence potentially have a preference for commitment, were indeed significantly more likely to open the commitment savings account. After twelve months, average savings balances increased by 81 percentage points for those clients assigned to the treatment group relative to those assigned to the control group. We conclude that the savings response represents a lasting change in savings, and not merely a short-term response to a new product.
What motivates people to trust and be trustworthy? Is trust solely "calculative," based on the expectation of trustworthiness, and trustworthiness only reciprocity? Employing a withinsubject design, we ran investment and dictator game experiments in Russia, South Africa and the United States. Additionally, we measured risk preferences and expectations of trustworthiness. Expectations of trustworthiness account for most of the variance in trust, but unconditional kindness also matters. Variance in trustworthiness is mainly accounted for by unconditional kindness, while reciprocity plays a comparatively small role. There exists some heterogeneity in motivation but people behave surprisingly similarly in the three countries studied.
Household outcomes depend on decisions made by spouses who may often disagree. Given these potential differences in preferences, the particular conditions under which intra-household decisions are taken may matter a great deal for household outcomes. A large and growing literature in economics provides evidence from several countries that household savings and investment are significantly affected by how decision-making power is allocated between women and men. In particular, when intra-household financial decisions are made by women, savings and investment are often greater and repayment of debt is more likely.
1Theoretical and empirical work in economics has generally overlooked the range of factors that influence intra-household decisions. Most models of household decisions have either treated the household as an individual decision maker-ignoring intra-household decisions completelyor modeled household decisions as a bargaining process between agents who are able to make 1 For example, income given to women is more likely to be used for investments in education, children's nutrition, and housing than income in the hands of men (Duncan Thomas 1990, 1994John Hoddinott and Lawrence Haddad 1995;Esther Duflo 2003
The controversy over how much to charge for health products in the developing world rests, in part, on whether higher prices can increase use, either by targeting distribution to high-use households (a screening effect), or by stimulating use psychologically through a sunk-cost effect. We develop a methodology for separating these two effects. We implement the methodology in a field experiment in Zambia using door-to-door marketing of a home water purification solution. We find evidence of economically important screening effects. By contrast, we find no consistent evidence of sunk-cost effects. (JEL C93, D12, I11, M31, O12)
We conduct a field experiment to evaluate the effect of extrinsic rewards, both financial and non-financial, on the performance of agents recruited by a public health organization to promote HIV prevention and sell condoms. In this setting: (i) non-financial rewards are effective at improving performance; (ii) the effect of both rewards is stronger for pro-socially motivated agents; (iii) the effect of both rewards is stronger when their relative value is higher. The findings illustrate that extrinsic rewards can improve the performance of agents engaged in public service delivery, and that non-financial rewards can be effective in settings where the power of financial incentives is limited.
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