Working Paper: NBER ID: w24391
Authors: Shilpa Aggarwal; Eilin Francis; Jonathan Robinson
Abstract: Many farmers in the developing world lack access to effective savings and storage devices. Such devices might be particularly valuable for farmers since income is received as a lump sum at harvest but expenditures are incurred throughout the year, and because grain prices are low at harvest but rise over the year. We experimentally provided two saving schemes to 132 ROSCAs in Kenya, one designed around communally storing maize and the other around saving cash for inputs. About 56% of respondents took up the products. Respondents in the maize storage intervention were 23 percentage points more likely to store maize (on a base of 69%), 37 percentage points more likely to sell maize (on a base of 36%) and (conditional on selling) sold later and at higher prices. We find no effects of the individual input savings intervention on input usage, likely because baseline input adoption was higher than expected.
Keywords: Savings; Farmers; Storage; Kenya; Randomized Controlled Trial
JEL Codes: D14; O12; O13; O16
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| savings intervention (D14) | maize stored at home (Q13) |
| GSRA treatment (C21) | cash income (G29) |
| GSRA treatment (C21) | likelihood of storing maize (Q13) |
| GSRA treatment (C21) | likelihood of selling maize (Q13) |
| GSRA treatment (C21) | later sales of maize (N52) |
| GSRA treatment (C21) | higher price of maize (Q11) |
| ISRA treatment (F38) | input usage (C67) |