Karlan Dean, Ratan Aishwarya Lakshmi, Zinman Jonathan
Yale University, Innovations for Poverty Action, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T, and NBER.
Dartmouth College, Innovations for Poverty Action, Abdul Latif Jameel Poverty Action Lab at M.I.T, and NBER.
Rev Income Wealth. 2014 Mar;60(1):36-78. doi: 10.1111/roiw.12101.
The poor can and do save, but often use formal or informal instruments that have high risk, high cost, and limited functionality. This could lead to undersaving compared to a world without market or behavioral frictions. Undersaving can have important welfare consequences: variable consumption, low resilience to shocks, and foregone profitable investments. We lay out five sets of constraints that may hinder the adoption and effective usage of savings products and services by the poor: transaction costs, lack of trust and regulatory barriers, information and knowledge gaps, social constraints, and behavioral biases. We discuss each in theory, and then summarize related empirical evidence, with a focus on recent field experiments. We then put forward key open areas for research and practice. D12, D91, G21, O16.
穷人能够而且确实会储蓄，但他们往往使用风险高、成本高且功能有限的正规或非正规工具。与不存在市场或行为摩擦的情况相比，这可能导致储蓄不足。储蓄不足会产生重要的福利后果：消费波动、应对冲击的能力低以及错过有利可图的投资机会。我们列出了可能阻碍穷人采用和有效使用储蓄产品及服务的五类制约因素：交易成本、缺乏信任和监管障碍、信息和知识差距、社会制约因素以及行为偏差。我们在理论上对每一类进行讨论，然后总结相关的实证证据，重点关注近期的实地实验。接着，我们提出了关键的研究和实践开放领域。（分类号：D12、D91、G21、O16）
