Aspirations and Financial Decisions: Experimental Evidence from the Philippines David McKenzie, Aakash Mohpal and Dean Yang Abstract A randomized experiment among poor entrepreneurs tested the impact of exogenously inducing higher financial aspirations. In theory, raising aspirations could have positive effects by inducing higher effort, but could also reduce effort if unmet aspirations lead to frustration. […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 515, July 2017
Grain Today, Gain Tomorrow: Evidence from a Storage Experiment with Savings Clubs in Kenya Shilpa Aggarwal, Eilin Francis, Jonathan Robinson Staple food prices in rural Africa display predictable, sizeable seasonal price changes, from post-harvest troughs to lean season peaks. We experimentally evaluate a group-based grain storage scheme with 132 savings clubs in Kenya. Treatment clubs […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 552, April 2020
Saving for Multiple Financial Needs: Evidence from Lockboxes and Mobile Money in Malawi Shilpa Aggarwal, Valentina Brailovskaya, Jonathan Robinson Abstract We test whether the provision of multiple labeled savings accounts affects savings and downstream outcomes in an experiment with 761 microentrepreneurs in urban Malawi. Treatment respondents received one or multiple savings accounts, in the form […]
BREAD Working Paper No. 565, August 2019
Housing Prices, Inter-generational Co-residence, and “Excess” Savings by the Young: Evidence using Chinese Data Mark R. Rosenzweig, Junsen Zhang Abstract In many countries of the world the co-residence of young adults aged 25-34 with their parents is not uncommon and in some countries the savings rates of these age groups exceed those of the middle-aged […]