As America imagines a 21st-century safety net—and the roles of governments, businesses and communities—some of the solutions will involve just giving money. The right amount of money at the right time can make a big difference for people, especially for working families without much financial slack. That requires beginning with the idea that in fact it’s not just about money. How and when matter too.
Publications
Viewing publications by category: Books & Chapters
Rethinking Poverty, Household Finance, and Microfinance
High-frequency data show that the material condition of poverty is only partly captured by overall insufficiency of resources. Instead, life in poverty is often characterized by the interaction of insufficiency × instability × illiquidity, visible when measuring poverty in shorter time units than the year. In this context, reducing instability and/or illiquidity can reduce exposure to poverty even when average earning power (overall insufficiency) is unchanged. The high-frequency view shows the power of intra-year consumption smoothing, while also showing that consumption smoothing often requires the spiking of spending. The instability revealed by the high-frequency view creates a tension between flexibility and structure in the design of behavioral financial products. In practice, microfinance borrowing and saving are often used to address the ups and downs of household spending needs rather than business needs. High-frequency instability also explains why ex post moral hazard (“strategic default”) is a particular problem for lenders (rather than the textbook ex ante moral hazard depiction) and, in turn, why joint liability is difficult to sustain. The installment structure of typical microfinance loan contracts (i.e., high-frequency repayments) is similar to the structure of consumer lending products and contractual saving products, explaining how microfinance loans work naturally for purposes other than business investment, even when that departs from lenders’ nominal intentions. The high-frequency view helps to show why microfinance loans remain popular as financial tools despite modest measured impacts on average household income.
RCTs in Development Economics, Their Critics and Their Evolution
A chapter in the forthcoming edited volume, Randomized Control Trials in Development: the Gold Standard Revisited, by Florent Bédécarrats, Isabelle Guerin, and François Roubaud.
The use of RCTs in development economics has attracted a consistent drumbeat of criticism, but relatively little response from so-called randomistas (other than a steadily increasing number of practitioners and papers). Here I systematize the critiques and discuss the difficulty in responding directly to them. Then I apply prominent RCT critic Lant Pritchett’s PDIA framework to illustrate how the RCT movement has been responsive to the critiques if not to the critics through a steady evolution of practice. Finally, I assess the current state of the RCT movement in terms of impact and productivity.
The Disruptive Power of RCTs
A chapter in the forthcoming edited volume, Randomized Control Trials in Development: the Gold Standard Revisited, by Florent Bédécarrats, Isabelle Guerin, and François Roubaud.
The use of RCTs in development economics has attracted a consistent drumbeat of criticism, but relatively little response from so-called randomistas (other than a steadily increasing number of practitioners and papers). Here I systematize the critiques and discuss the difficulty in responding directly to them. Then I apply prominent RCT critic Lant Pritchett’s PDIA framework to illustrate how the RCT movement has been responsive to the critiques if not to the critics through a steady evolution of practice. Finally, I assess the current state of the RCT movement in terms of impact and productivity.
Microfinance and Economic Development
Microfinance is generally seen as a way to fix credit markets and unleash the productive capacities of poor people dependent on self-employment. The microfinance sector grew quickly since the 1990s, paving the way for other forms of social enterprise and social investment. But recent evidence shows only modest average impacts on customers, generating a backlash against microfinance. We reconsider the claims about microfinance, highlighting the diversity in evidence on impacts and the important (but limited) role of subsidy. We conclude by describing an evolution of thinking: from microfinance as narrowly-construed entrepreneurial finance toward microfinance as broadly-construed household finance. In this vision, microfinance yields benefits by providing liquidity for a wide range of needs rather than solely by boosting business income.
By Jonathan Morduch and Robert Cull
In and Out of Poverty: Episodic Poverty and Income Volatility in the U.S. Financial Diaries (Working Paper)
We use data from the U.S. Financial Diaries study to relate episodic poverty to intra-year income volatility and to the availability of government transfers. The U.S. Financial Diaries data track a continuous year’s worth of month-to-month income for 235 low- and moderate-income households, each with at least one employed member, in four regions in the United States. The data provide an unusually granular view of household financial transactions, allowing the documentation of episodic poverty, and the attribution of a large share of it to fluctuations in earnings within jobs. For households with annual income greater than 150 percent of the poverty line, smoothing within-job income variability reduces the incidence of episodic poverty by roughly half. We decompose how month-to-month income volatility responds to receipt of eight types of public or private transfers. The transfers assist households mainly by raising the mean of income rather than by dampening intra-year income variability.
By Jonathan Morduch and Julie Siwicki
Income Gains and Month-to-Month Income Volatility: Household evidence from the US Financial Diaries (Working Paper)
The US Financial Diaries track the finances of a small sample of low and moderate-income households over a year. The households faced substantial swings in income from month to month. On average, they experienced 2.5 months when income fell more than 25 percent below average.
Borrowing to Save: Perspectives from Portfolios of the Poor
It’s not surprising that saving is hard for many of us. We’re impatient, temptations are at hand, and savings devices are seldom ideal. By the same token, it would not be surprising to find that we have a hard time keeping money in the bank. But, puzzlingly, new studies give examples of people withdrawing funds less often than neoclassical economic theory suggests they should (e.g., relative to the simulations of optimal savings in Deaton 1991). And, paradoxically, it is often the same people who had trouble saving who also have trouble drawing down their savings. Some are so reluctant to dis-save that they willingly borrow at expensive interest rates to avoid touching their savings.
Access to Finance: Chapter 2, Handbook of Development Economics, Volume 5
Expanding access to financial services holds the promise to help reduce poverty and spur economic development. But, as a practical matter, commercial banks have faced challenges expanding access to poor and low-income households in developing economies, and nonprofits have had limited reach. We review recent innovations that are improving the quantity and quality of financial access. They are taking possibilities well beyond early models centered on providing “microcredit” for small business investment. We focus on new credit mechanisms and devices that help households manage cash flows, save, and cope with risk. Our eye is on contract designs, product innovations, regulatory policy, and ultimately economic and social impacts. We relate the innovations and empirical evidence to theoretical ideas, drawing links in particular to new work in behavioral economics and to randomized evaluation methods.