The Interplay Among Savings Accounts and Network-Based Financial Arrangements: Evidence from a Field Experiment

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Comola, Margherita; Prina, Silvia
• 署名单位: Universite Paris Saclay; Paris School of Economics; Northeastern University
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueac053
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 516-535
• 关键词: insurance; transfers; banking; RISK

摘要

This paper studies how formal financial access affects network-based financial arrangements. We use a field experiment that granted access to a savings account to a random subset of households in 19 Nepalese villages. Exploiting a unique panel dataset that follows all bilateral informal financial transactions before and after the intervention, we show that households that were offered access to an account increased their loans and total transfers to others, independent of the treatment status of the receiver. The increase seemed to be driven by treatment households with more assets and greater financial inclusion at baseline.