Replication data for: Banking the Unbanked? Evidence from Three Countries

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Pascaline Dupas; Dean Karlan; Jonathan Robinson; Diego Ubfal

Version: View help for Version V1

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20160597_addmaterials			12/07/2019 01:11:PM
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Project Citation:

Dupas, Pascaline, Karlan, Dean, Robinson, Jonathan, and Ubfal, Diego. Replication data for: Banking the Unbanked? Evidence from Three Countries. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2018. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2019-12-07. https://doi.org/10.3886/E116346V1

Project Description

Summary: We experimentally test the impact of expanding access to basic bank accounts in Uganda, Malawi, and Chile. Over two years, 17, 10, and 3 percent of treatment individuals made five or more deposits, respectively. Average monthly deposits in treatment accounts were sizable among users, corresponding to the seventy-ninth, ninety-first, and ninety-sixth percentiles of baseline savings. Survey data show no discernible intention-to-treat effects on savings or any downstream outcomes, though we cannot reject large effect sizes for active users. Results suggest that policies merely focused on expanding access to basic accounts are unlikely to improve welfare noticeably on average.

Scope of Project

JEL Classification:
      D14 Household Saving; Personal Finance
      G21 Banks; Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
      O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
      O16 Economic Development: Financial Markets; Saving and Capital Investment; Corporate Finance and Governance

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V1 [2019-12-07]

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