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Daily Collectors, Public Good Provision and Private Consumption: Theory and Evidence from Urban Benin
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Daily Collectors, Public Good Provision and Private Consumption: Theory and Evidence from Urban Benin

Author

Listed:
  • Vincent Somville

    (Center for Research in the Economics of Development, University of Namur)

Abstract

Daily collectors operate worldwide; they charge a fee in exchange for the collection of their client's deposits. The clients recover their savings after one month. With a negative nominal return of -3.3% per month, the service is quite expensive but nonetheless prevalent among the very poor. The economic literature so far emphasizes two motives for making deposits: (i) it is safer than bringing the money home, (ii) people want to commit to save. I argue that in addition to these two motives, people make deposits in order to reduce their contribution to the household's expenses and increase their private consumption. This intra-household motive is first modelled and then tested using a unique panel data set collected in Benin. The panel structure of the data allows me to isolate the effect of the third motive. Additionally, I show that daily collectors enable women to make more gifts to their children and acquaintances, and allow men to reduce those gifts and their participation to household's public goods. There is large positive effect of the deposits on people's purchase of new clothes, and making deposits increases women's expenditures on frivolous goods by 200% to 300%. Finally, the commitment motive appears to be an important determinant of men's deposits.

Suggested Citation

  • Vincent Somville, 2011. "Daily Collectors, Public Good Provision and Private Consumption: Theory and Evidence from Urban Benin," Working Papers 1106, University of Namur, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:nam:wpaper:1106
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    File URL: http://www.fundp.ac.be/eco/economie/recherche/wpseries/wp/1106.pdf
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Marcel Fafchamps & David McKenzie & Simon Quinn & Christopher Woodruff, 2011. "When is capital enough to get female microenterprises growing? Evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana," CSAE Working Paper Series 2011-11, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    2. Deschênes, Sarah & Dumas, Christelle & Lambert, Sylvie, 2020. "Household resources and individual strategies," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    3. Eliana Carranza & Aletheia Donald & Florian Grosset & Supreet Kaur, 2022. "The Social Tax: Redistributive Pressure and Labor Supply," NBER Working Papers 30438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Fafchamps, Marcel & McKenzie, David & McKenzie, David & Quinn, Simon & Woodruff, Christopher, 2011. "When is capital enough to get female enterprises growing ? evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5706, The World Bank.
    5. Fafchamps, Marcel & McKenzie, David & Quinn, Simon & Woodruff, Christopher, 2014. "Microenterprise growth and the flypaper effect: Evidence from a randomized experiment in Ghana," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 211-226.
    6. Grant Miller & A. Mushfiq Mobarak, 2013. "Gender Differences in Preferences, Intra-Household Externalities, and Low Demand for Improved Cookstoves," NBER Working Papers 18964, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Intra-household; deposit collectors; micro-savings; non-cooperative household's members; public good provision; commitment;
    All these keywords.

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