Social Norms and Individual Savings in the Context of Informal Insurance

This paper develops a theory of informal insurance in the presence of an intertemporal technology. It is shown that when an insurance agreement suffers from enforcement problems, constraints on individual savings behaviour can enable the group to sustain greater cooperation. This result provides a motivation for a variety of social norms observed in traditional societies which discourage 'excessive' accumulation of wealth by individuals. The paper also shows that social norms that discourage savings are more likely to benefit poorer communities and thus, paradoxically, cause them to fall further behind even as it serves a useful purpose.

Gender, Social Norms and Household Production in Burkina Faso.

Empirical studies of intra-household allocation has revealed that, in many instances, gender is an important determinant in the allocation of resources within the household. Yet, within the theoretical literature, why gender matters within the household remains an open question. In this paper, we propose a simple model of intra-household allocation based on a particular social institution for the organisation of agricultural production practised among certain ethnic groups in West Africa. We highlight how this institution, while resolving certain problems of commitment and informational asymmetry, can also lead to a gendered pattern in the allocation of productive resources and consumption within the household. Using a survey of agricultural households in Burkina Faso, we show, consistent with this theory, that plots owned by the head of the household are farmed more intensively, and achieves higher yields, than plots with similar characteristics owned by other household members. Male and female family members who do not head the household achieve similar yields. We argue that the higher yields achieved by the household head may be explained in terms of social norms that require him to spend the earnings from some plots under his control exclusively on household public goods, which in turn provides other family members the incentive to voluntarily contribute labour on his farms. Using expenditures data, and measures of rainfall to capture weather-related shocks to agricultural income, we show that the household head has, indeed, a higher marginal propensity to spend on household public goods than other household members. The fact that the head of the household is usually male accounts for the gendered pattern in labour allocation and yields across different farm plots.

Public Good Provision in Indian Rural Areas : The Returns to Collective Action by Microfinance Groups

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. The authors provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods within village communities. Using a theoretical model, this paper shows that an elected official, whose aim is to maximize reelection chances, exerts higher effort in providing public goods when private citizens undertake collective action and coordinate their voluntary contributions towards the same goods. This effect occurs although government and private contributions are assumed to be substitutes in the technology of providing public goods. Using first-hand data on SHGs in India, the paper tests the prediction of the model and shows that, in response to collective action by SHGs, local authorities tackle a larger variety of public issues, and are more likely to tackle issues of interest to SHGs. The findings highlight how the social behavior of SHGs can influence the governance of rural Indian communities

Microfinance and Gender Empowerment

In the past 30 years, microfinance has carried many promises of social and economic transformation, with the shift towards targeting women being seen as a major strategic move through which the promise of social development could be most e¤ectively delivered. However, ethnographic studies have shown that many women relinquish the use of their loans to male members of the household, belying the empowering promise of microfinance. We propose a simple model of household bargaining to examine how providing women with credit affects production and decision-making power in the household. In particular, we allow for cooperative endeavours in production between the husband and the wife and the possibility of investing a loan in such endeavours. We show that the introduction of a microcredit programme is likely to have widely heterogeneous impacts, and can adversely affect the bargaining power of some women. We demonstrate that access to credit allows a woman to strengthen her bargaining position through an expansion of her autonomous activities (the causal mechanism hoped for) only in a limited number of cases: when she is able to invest her new capital profitably in an autonomous activity, and her husband has no alternative activity in which the same capital would generate comparable returns, or lacks the power to overrule her preferred investment choice. The two cases in which it is most likely that the availability of credit would enable the woman to strengthen her bargaining position within the household are (i) when capital can be invested in a cooperative activity to which both spouses contribute in an important way, and (ii) when a large share of the household budget is devoted to expenditures on household public goods

Microfinance and Gender Empowerment.

In the past 30 years, microfinance has carried many promises of social and economic transformation, with the shift towards targeting women being seen as a major strategic move through which the promise of social development could be most effectively delivered. However, ethnographic studies have shown that many women relinquish the use of their loans to male members of the household, belying the empowering promise of microfinance. We propose a simple model of household bargaining which examines how providing women with credit affects production and decision-making power in the household. Following Bergstrom (1996), we account for the roles of both divorce and non-cooperation in the household as relevant fall-back options in the bargaining strategy of each spouse. We show that the introduction of a microcredit programme is likely to have widely heterogeneous impacts, and can adversely affect the bargaining power of some women. We demonstrate that access to credit allows a woman to strengthen her bargaining position through an expansion of her autonomous activities (the causal mechanism hoped for) only in a limited number of cases: when she is able to invest her new capital profitably in an autonomous activity, and her husband has no alternative activity in which the same capital would generate comparable returns, or lacks the power to overrule her preferred investment choice. The two cases in which it is most likely that the availability of credit would enable the woman to strengthen her bargaining position within the household are (i) when capital can be invested in a cooperative activity to which both spouses contribute in an important way, and (ii) when a large share of the household budget is devoted to expenditures on household public goods.

Elite Capture Through Information Distortion: A Theoretical Essay

Common wisdom as well as sound analytical arguments suggest that stronger punishment of deviant behavior meted out by a principal typically prompts the agents to better conform with his objectives. Addressing the specific issue of donor-beneficiary relationships in the context of participatory development programs, we nevertheless show that greater tolerance on the part of donors may, under certain conditions, favor rather than hurt the interests of the poor. Also, greater uncertainty surrounding the donor's knowledge regarding the poor's preference may have the same paradoxical effect. Critical features of our framework are: (i) communities are heterogeneous and dominated by the local elite in dealing with external agencies, (ii) the elite choose the project proposed to the donor strategically, knowing that the latter has a certain amount of tolerance toward elite capture and an imperfect knowledge of the poor's priorities.community-driven development, aid effectiveness, elite capture, preference targeting, information distortion.

REPAYMENT INCENTIVES AND THE DISTRIBUTION OF GAINS FROM GROUP LENDING

Group loans with joint liability have been a distinguishing feature of many micronance programs. While such lending has benetted millions of borrowers, major lending insti- tutions have acknowledged their limited impact among the very poor and have recently favored individual contracts. This paper attempts to understand these empirical patterns using a model in which there is a single investment project and access to credit is limited by weak repayment incentives. We show that in the absence of large social sanctions, the poorest borrowers are o ered individual and not group contracts. When both types of contracts are feasible, the relative gains from group loans are shown to be decreasing in loan size. We compare the role of bank enforcement with social sanctions and nd that bank enforcement is more e ective in increasing outreach while social sanctions raise the welfare of infra-marginal borrowers. Finally, we explore the welfare e ects of group size and nd that those requiring small loans are better served by larger groups but group size e ects are, in general, ambiguous.microcredit, joint-liability, group lending, repayment incentives, social sanctions.

Charitable Giving or Signalling? Voluntary Contributions by Microcredit Borrowers in Pakistan

This paper investigates charitable giving by atypical donors in an unusual setting: the donors are microfinance recipients who provide charitable contributions to their lender, a non-profit institution. The institution provides interest-free loans but encourages its borrowers to make a voluntary contribution of any amount with the monthly instalment for principal repayment. Analysis of these monthly voluntary contributions suggests that the institution rewards borrowers for their contributions by giving them repeat loans. In particular, borrowers on joint liability loans in poorly performing groups make larger contributions using individual contributions to override a group-level signal. We develop a theory to show that this giving behaviour is consistent with borrowers signalling their level of success with the loan, but inconsistent with other explanations, including purely altruistic motives for giving. We argue that this mechanism of signalling success can provide the basis for a potential innovation in providing financial services in the presence of informational asymmetries

Social attitudes that view female child marriage as a means of protecting respectability need to change

Drawing on their extensive research of female child marriage in Bangladesh, M Niaz Asadullah and Zaki Wahhaj discuss the limitations of current deliberations over the minimum age of marriage law. They write that improving the agency of adolescent girls to make their own life choices should help reduce the incidence the child marriage more effectively than what can be achieved with legislative reform alone

Essays on microeconomics of the household

Thesis (Ph. D.)--Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Dept. of Economics, 2006.Includes bibliographical references.These essays are concerned with the problem of cooperation among individuals in a household and among households in a community under lack of commitment. The first chapter provides a theoretical investigation of consumption patterns in a household in which income is stochastic and some expenditures are public to household members. It is shown that in the constrained efficient agreement, private expenditures of household members do not necessarily co-move, as they do in both the first-best agreement and the constrained efficient agreement when all expenditures are private. In particular, the absence of co-movement of private expenditures in the household do not necessarily imply the absence of mutual insurance; and, indeed, negative correlation in private expenditures can be consistent with a cooperative agreement. These results indicate that caution should be used in interpreting the correlation of private expenditures of household members as a measure of cooperation and mutual insurance within the household. Chapter two investigates the effect of lack of commitment on household savings in a constrained efficient mutual insurance agreement among different households.(cont.) It is shown that a saving rule is part of the agreement if and only if risk aversion changes with wealth. If not, no gains can be had from contracting on savings. Under reasonable assumptions about risk preferences, the constrained efficient agreement tends to depress savings to a greater extent for poorer individuals than for richer individuals, thus increasing inequality in consumption and wealth over time relative to the case where savings are not contracted. Chapter three (co-authored with Harounan Kazianga) provides evidence, using a survey of agricultural households in Burkina Faso, that plots owned by the head of the household is farmed much more intensively than plots, with similar characteristics and planted to the same crops, owned by other household members (of both genders). As in previous studies, this evidence is inconsistent with the assumption of Pareto efficiency in household decisions, but additionally suggests that status within the household rather than gender per se may be the most important factor in determining the allocation of productive resources within the household. We argue that the higher yields achieved by the household head may be explained in terms of social norms that require him to spend the earnings from some farms under his control exclusively on household public goods, as has been observed in the anthropological literature on this region.by Zaki Wahhaj.Ph.D