Commitments to save: a field experiment in rural Malawi

By Lasse Brune, X. Giné, Jessica Goldberg, Dean Yang. 2011

299 citations recorded by the source corpus.

This paper reports the results of a field experiment that randomly assigned smallholder cash crop farmers formal savings accounts. In collaboration with a microfinance institution in Malawi, the authors tested two primary treatments, offering either: 1)"ordinary"accounts, or 2) both ordinary and"commitment"accounts. Commitment accounts allowed customers to restrict access to their own funds until a future date of their choosing. A control group was not offered any account but was tracked alongside the treatment groups. Only the commitment treatment had statistically significant effects on subsequent outcomes. The effects were positive and large on deposits and withdrawals immediately prior to the next planting season, agricultural input use in that planting, crop sales from the subsequent harvest, and household expenditures in the period after harvest. Across the set of key outcomes, the commitment savings treatment had larger effects than the ordinary savings treatment. Additional evidence suggests that the positive impacts of commitment derive from keeping funds from being shared with one's social network.

Subfields: Business and International Management, Economics and Econometrics, Safety Research

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/8b40b48ceaa75112431202bc37f3f159603e78d3

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Business and International Management

In Economics and Econometrics

In Safety Research

Citations in the corpus

The Cost of Convenience? (2017, unknown): “This finding is not unique to this study and has been observed in contexts including other areas of Kenya (Dupas and Robinson 2013; Dupas and Robinson 2014), Malawi (Brune et al. 2013), India (Shapiro 2010), and Mali (Dean and Sautmann 2014).”
Assessing Countries’ Financial Inclusion Standing: A New Composite Index (2014, unknown): “Brune et al. (2011) conduct a field experiments in rural Malawi analyzing venues through which access to formal financial services improves the lives of the poor, with respect to saving products.”
Financial Inclusion, Poverty, and Income Inequality in Developing Asia (2015, background): “Similarly, Brune et al. (2011) found that increased financial access through commitment saving account in rural Malawi improves the well-being of poor households as it provides access to their savings for agricultural input use.”
Financial Inclusion: New Measurement and Cross-Country Impact Assessment (2018, unknown): “Similarly, Brune et al. (2011) show that increased financial access through commitmentsavings accounts in rural Malawi improves the well-being of poor households, which were able to keep their savings for agricultural inputs, creating an access to funds for lean periods.”
Underinvestment in a Profitable Technology: The Case of Seasonal Migration in Bangladesh (2014, background): “…been documented in Ethiopia (Dercon and Krishnan 2000), where poverty and malnourishment increase 27% during the lean season, Mozambique and Malawi (Brune et al. 2011) – where people refer to a “hungry season”, Madagascar, where (Dostie et al. 2002) estimate that 1 million people fall into poverty…”
A theory of financial inclusion and income inequality (2020, background): “…services on the income of poor and low-income households is consistently and significantly more positive than that of (micro-) credit (Brune et al. 2011; Dupas and Robinson2013 ; Karlan, Ratan, and Zinman 2014; Banerjee, Karlan, and Zinman 2015; Banerjee et al.2015 ; Demirguc-Kunt,…”
The Persistent Power of Behavioral Change: Long-Run Impacts of Temporary Savings Subsidies for the Poor (2018, unknown): “Researchers have evaluated a range of services designed to address behavioral barriers to saving (Ashraf et al. 2006; Brune et al. 2013; Karlan et al. 2013; Kast et al. 2013; Dupas and Robinson 2014; Callen et al. 2014).”
Gender Differences in Preferences, Intra-Household Externalities, and Low Demand for Improved Cookstoves (2013, background): “…offered by a product delivery rather than more fungible cash is valuable to women, possibly because they are unable to resist external demands on their income from either their spouse or from others (Anderson & Baland, 2002; Duflo, 2003; de Mel et al., 2009; Brune et al., 2011; Somville, 2011).”
The African Financial Development and Financial Inclusion Gaps (2014, background): “Experimental studies based on randomized controlled trials (RCTs) show that female shopkeepers in rural Kenya (Dupas and Robinson, 2011) and tobacco farmers in Malawi (Brune et al., 2011) used commitment savings accounts that enabled them to credibly claim that they could not divert funds to outside”
Behavioral Design: A New Approach to Development Policy (2014, background): “Farmers given this option bought and used much more fertilizer and other inputs, leading to higher crop sales (Brune et al. 2011).”