Beyond Cash: Assessing Externality and Behaviour Effects of Non-Experimental Cash Transfers

Rafael Ribas, Fabio Veras Soares (), Clarissa Teixeira, Elydia Silva and Guilherme Hirata

Working Papers PIERI from PEP-PIERI

Abstract: In this paper we propose a method to estimate externality effects in cash transfer programmes, even in cases when the benefit is not randomly assigned. Externality is assessed through the decomposition of the average treatment effect on the treated (ATT) into participation (direct) effect and externality (indirect) effect. We also suggest a nonparametric decomposition to investigate whether changes in household outcomes are caused by the income transfer itself or by the other non-monetary components of the programme, such as conditionalities and family support services. We apply all these decompositions on the effect of a conditional cash transfer (CCT) programme on household consumption and savings in Paraguay. This was possible because of the presence of two distinct comparison groups, one within the village and potentially exposed to the externality, and another in a different village not affected by the programme. Furthermore, the evaluation survey collected information on both income and consumption. The results indicate that the programme has a small impact on consumption and a considerable impact on savings. In the absence of externality, however, the programme would have a higher effect on consumption, mostly associated with the cash transfer, and a lower effect on savings. Moreover, the impact on the pattern of consumption is significantly related to a substitution effect and is not related to the increase in income.

Keywords: Externality; Income effect; Behaviour effect; Conditional cash transfer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C21 D12 D62 I38 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2011
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dev
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
https://portal.pep-net.org/documents/download/id/18062 (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Beyond Cash: Assessing Externality and Behaviour Effects of Non-Experimental Cash Transfers (2010)
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:lvl:piercr:2011-18

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers PIERI from PEP-PIERI Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Manuel Paradis ().