Under-Savers Anonymous: Evidence on Self-Help Groups and Peer Pressure as a Savings Commitment Device / Felipe Kast, Stephan Meier, Dina Pomeranz.

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Kast, Felipe

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Material type: Text

TextSeries: Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) ; no. w18417.Publication details: Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2012.Description: 1 online resource: illustrations (black and white)Subject(s):

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Abstract: We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to increase savings (the number of deposits grows 3.5-fold and the average savings balance almost doubles). Conversely, a substantially higher interest rate has no effect on most participants. A second experiment tests an alternative delivery mechanism and shows that effects of a similar size can be achieved by holding people accountable through feedback text messages, without any meetings or peer pressure.

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Item type	Home library	Collection	Call number	Status	Date due	Barcode	Item holds
Working Paper	Biblioteca Digital	Colección NBER	nber w18417 (Browse shelf(Opens below))	Not For Loan

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September 2012.

We test the effectiveness of self-help peer groups as a commitment device for precautionary savings, through two randomized field experiments among 2,687 microentrepreneurs in Chile. The first experiment finds that self-help peer groups are a powerful tool to increase savings (the number of deposits grows 3.5-fold and the average savings balance almost doubles). Conversely, a substantially higher interest rate has no effect on most participants. A second experiment tests an alternative delivery mechanism and shows that effects of a similar size can be achieved by holding people accountable through feedback text messages, without any meetings or peer pressure.