Access to banking, savings and consumption smoothing in rural India q

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Somville, Vincent; Vandewalle, Lore
• 署名单位: Norwegian School of Economics (NHH)
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2023.104900
• 发表日期: 2023
• 关键词: D14; G21; O16; O12

摘要

To what extent does access to banking help poor households to save and smooth consumption? To answer this fundamental question, we combine a field experiment that randomly provides access to a bank account with weekly interviews on household finances. Access to banking does not change average consumption, but it improves consumption smoothing by alleviating savings constraints. Indeed, the con-trol's expenditures follow income more closely than the expenditures of the treated. The latter handle variations in income by engaging in pro-cyclical saving in their account. These results provide an impor-tant new insight into the role of banking in low-and middle-income countries.(c) 2023 The Author(s). Published by Elsevier B.V. This is an open access article under the CC BY license (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/).