Follow the money not the cash: Comparing methods for identifying consumption and investment responses to a liquidity shock

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Karlan, Dean; Osman, Adam; Zinman, Jonathan
• 署名单位: Yale University; National Bureau of Economic Research; University of Illinois System; University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign; Dartmouth College
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF DEVELOPMENT ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0304-3878
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jdeveco.2015.10.009
• 发表日期: 2016
• 页码: 11-23
• 关键词: Loan use; consumption; INVESTMENT; Liquidity constraint; Liquidity shock; fungibility; Microcredit; Microenterprise

摘要

Measuring the impacts of liquidity shocks on spending is difficult methodologically but important for theory, practice, and policy. We compare three approaches for tackling this question: directly asking borrowers how they spend proceeds from a loan (direct elicitation); asking borrowers using a list randomization technique (indirect elicitation) that allows them to answer discretely in cases where loan uses are at odds with lender policies or social norms; and, a counterfactual analysis in which we compare household and enterprise cash outflows for those in a treatment group, randomly assigned to receive credit, to a control group. The counterfactual analysis yields an estimate that about 100% of loan-financed spending is on business inventory. For the direct and indirect elicitations, we find evidence of both strategic misreporting and following the cash: borrowers likely report what they physically did with cash proceeds, rather than counterfactual spending. (C) 2016 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.