Risk Sharing and Transactions Costs: Evidence from Kenya's Mobile Money Revolution

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Jack, William; Suri, Tavneet
• 署名单位: Georgetown University; Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT)
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0002-8282
• DOI: 10.1257/aer.104.1.183
• 发表日期: 2014
• 页码: 183-223
• 关键词: informal insurance; consumption; networks; performance; TECHNOLOGY; COMMITMENT; attrition; PROGRAMS; phones; shocks

摘要

We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers, the consumption of user households is unaffected. The mechanisms underlying these consumption effects are increases in remittances received and the diversity of senders. We report robustness checks supporting these results and use the four-fold expansion of the mobile money agent network as a source of exogenous variation in access to the innovation.