The Welfare and Market Effects of Delays in Humanitarian Assistance

Olivier Sterc

No 2025-08, CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford

Abstract: Delays in aid delivery are common, yet their impacts on households and markets remain theoretically ambiguous and empirically understudied. The Permanent Income Hypothesis predicts consumption smoothing, while models with financial constraints or present bias predict sharp consumption declines. We test these pre¬dictions using high-frequency data and random interview timing in a large refugee camp in Kenya. While households smooth consumption under regular aid cycles, delays reduce food consumption and well-being, with downstream effects on in-tertemporal preferences and cognitive function. Local prices respond to aid timing, and credit access mitigates impacts, but at a 17% premium. Results support credit constraint models.

Keywords: Cash transfers; Consumption smoothing; Permanent Income Hypothesis; Humanitarian assistance; Delays (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D50 I38 O12 O19 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:837a25d0-941b-4740-b1de-8186b9eacc6f (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:csa:wpaper:2025-08

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CSAE Working Paper Series from Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Julia Coffey ().