Abstract
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.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 11-23 |
Number of pages | 13 |
Journal | Journal of Development Economics |
Volume | 121 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1 2016 |
Keywords
- Consumption
- Fungibility
- Investment
- Liquidity constraint
- Liquidity shock
- Loan use
- Microcredit
- Microenterprise
ASJC Scopus subject areas
- Development
- Economics and Econometrics
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Follow the money not the cash: Comparing methods for identifying consumption and investment responses to a liquidity shock
Karlan, D. (Creator), Osman, A. M. (Creator) & Zinman, J. (Creator), Harvard Dataverse, May 9 2019
DOI: 10.7910/DVN/KKAWV7
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