The Persistent Power of Behavioral Change: Long-Run Impacts of Temporary Savings Subsidies for the Poor

Simone Schaner

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2018, vol. 10, issue 3, 67-100

Abstract: This paper uses a field experiment to test whether intrahousehold heterogeneity in discount factors leads to inefficient strategic savings behavior. I gave married couples in rural Kenya the opportunity to open both joint and individual bank accounts at randomly assigned interest rates. I also directly elicited discount factors for all individuals in the experiment. Couples who are well matched on discount factors are less likely to use costly individual accounts and respond robustly to relative rates of return between accounts, while their poorly-matched peers do not. Consequently, poorly-matched couples forgo significantly more interest earnings on their savings.

JEL-codes: C93 D13 D14 D90 G21 I32 O12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2018
Note: DOI: 10.1257/app.20170453
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (30)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20170453 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... vkLOWxk5xq6Uv311gWT3 (application/zip)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... iMPa78xSD-QnbcwVautR (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... gUTYx5spnIP2U7UmKAq7 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Persistent Power of Behavioral Change: Long-Run Impacts of Temporary Savings Subsidies for the Poor (2016)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejapp:v:10:y:2018:i:3:p:67-100

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().