IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/unu/wpaper/wp-2010-125.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Transfers and Development: Easy Come, Easy Go?

Author

Listed:
  • Luc Christiaensen
  • Lei Pan

Abstract

Contrary to the popular notion that money that is easily earned, is also easily spent, economic theory holds that income is fungible. Drawing on the concept of mental accounting, this study theoretically explores when such a link between spending behaviour and the effort dispensed in obtaining income is plausible.

Suggested Citation

  • Luc Christiaensen & Lei Pan, 2010. "Transfers and Development: Easy Come, Easy Go?," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2010-125, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
  • Handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2010-125
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.wider.unu.edu/sites/default/files/wp2010-125-.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Martin Browning & M. Dolores Collado, 2001. "The Response of Expenditures to Anticipated Income Changes: Panel Data Estimates," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 91(3), pages 681-692, June.
    2. Davies, Simon & Easaw, Joshy & Ghoshray, Atanu, 2009. "Mental accounting and remittances: A study of rural Malawian households," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 30(3), pages 321-334, June.
    3. Sumit Agarwal & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "The Reaction of Consumer Spending and Debt to Tax Rebates-Evidence from Consumer Credit Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 986-1019, December.
    4. Nicholas S. Souleles & Jonathan A. Parker & David S. Johnson, 2006. "Household Expenditure and the Income Tax Rebates of 2001," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(5), pages 1589-1610, December.
    5. Martin Browning & Annamaria Lusardi, 1996. "Household Saving: Micro Theories and Micro Facts," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 34(4), pages 1797-1855, December.
    6. James J. Choi & David Laibson & Brigitte C. Madrian, 2009. "Mental Accounting in Portfolio Choice: Evidence from a Flypaper Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 2085-2095, December.
    7. Drazen Prelec & George Loewenstein, 1998. "The Red and the Black: Mental Accounting of Savings and Debt," Marketing Science, INFORMS, vol. 17(1), pages 4-28.
    8. Thaler, Richard H & Shefrin, H M, 1981. "An Economic Theory of Self-Control," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(2), pages 392-406, April.
    9. Girishankar, Navin, 2009. "Innovating development finance - from financing sources to financial solutions," Policy Research Working Paper Series 5111, The World Bank.
    10. Milton Friedman, 1957. "A Theory of the Consumption Function," NBER Books, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc, number frie57-1, March.
    11. Paxson, Christina H, 1992. "Using Weather Variability to Estimate the Response of Savings to Transitory Income in Thailand," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(1), pages 15-33, March.
    12. Yu Zhu & Zhongmin Wu & Meiyan Wang & Yang Du & Fang Cai, 2011. "Do Migrants Really Save More? Understanding the Impact of Remittances on Savings in Rural China," Journal of Development Studies, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 48(5), pages 654-672, June.
    13. Esther Duflo & Christopher Udry, 2003. "Intrahousehold Resource Allocation in Côte D'ivoire: Social Norms, Separate Accounts and Consumption Choices," Working Papers 857, Economic Growth Center, Yale University.
    14. Matthew Odedokun, 2003. "Economics and Politics of Official Loans versus Grants: Panoramic Issues and Empirical Evidence," WIDER Working Paper Series DP2003-04, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    15. Nicholas S. Souleles, 1999. "The Response of Household Consumption to Income Tax Refunds," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 947-958, September.
    16. Baltagi, Badi H. & Wu, Ping X., 1999. "Unequally Spaced Panel Data Regressions With Ar(1) Disturbances," Econometric Theory, Cambridge University Press, vol. 15(6), pages 814-823, December.
    17. Milkman, Katherine L. & Beshears, John, 2009. "Mental accounting and small windfalls: Evidence from an online grocer," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 384-394, August.
    18. Martin Browning, 2000. "The Saving Behaviour of a Two‐person Household," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 102(2), pages 235-251, June.
    19. Milton Friedman, 1957. "Introduction to "A Theory of the Consumption Function"," NBER Chapters, in: A Theory of the Consumption Function, pages 1-6, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Pack, Howard & Pack, Janet Rothenberg, 1993. "Foreign Aid and the Question of Fungibility," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 75(2), pages 258-265, May.
    21. Jonathan A. Parker, 1999. "The Reaction of Household Consumption to Predictable Changes in Social Security Taxes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 959-973, September.
    22. Chang-Tai Hsieh, 2003. "Do Consumers React to Anticipated Income Changes? Evidence from the Alaska Permanent Fund," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(1), pages 397-405, March.
    23. Keeler, James P & James, William L & Abdel-Ghany, Mohamed, 1985. "The Relative Size of Windfall Income and the Permanent Income Hypothesis," Journal of Business & Economic Statistics, American Statistical Association, vol. 3(3), pages 209-215, June.
    24. Peter Kooreman, 2000. "The Labeling Effect of a Child Benefit System," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 571-583, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Beyene, Berhe Mekonnen, 2012. "The Link between International Remittances and Private Interhousehold Transfers," Memorandum 14/2012, Oslo University, Department of Economics.
    2. Shankar Ghimire & Kul Prasad Kapri, 2020. "Does the Source of Remittance Matter? Differentiated Effects of Earned and Unearned Remittances on Agricultural Productivity," Economies, MDPI, vol. 8(1), pages 1-15, January.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Luc Christiaensen & Lei Pan, 2010. "Transfers and Development: Easy Come, Easy Go?," WIDER Working Paper Series 125, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    2. Milkman, Katherine L. & Beshears, John, 2009. "Mental accounting and small windfalls: Evidence from an online grocer," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 71(2), pages 384-394, August.
    3. Christiaensen , Luc & Pan, Lei, 2012. "On the fungibility of spending and earnings -- evidence from rural China and Tanzania," Policy Research Working Paper Series 6298, The World Bank.
    4. Somville, Vincent & Vandewalle, Lore, 2023. "Access to banking, savings and consumption smoothing in rural India," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 223(C).
    5. Fuchs-Schündeln, N. & Hassan, T.A., 2016. "Natural Experiments in Macroeconomics," Handbook of Macroeconomics, in: J. B. Taylor & Harald Uhlig (ed.), Handbook of Macroeconomics, edition 1, volume 2, chapter 0, pages 923-1012, Elsevier.
    6. Eric Akobeng, 2017. "The Invisible Hand of Rain in Spending: Effect of Rainfall-Driven Agricultural Income on Per Capita Expenditure in Ghana," South African Journal of Economics, Economic Society of South Africa, vol. 85(1), pages 98-122, March.
    7. Christopher D. Carroll & Edmund Crawley & Jiri Slacalek & Kiichi Tokuoka & Matthew N. White, 2020. "Sticky Expectations and Consumption Dynamics," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 12(3), pages 40-76, July.
    8. d’Astous, Philippe, 2019. "Responses to an anticipated increase in cash on hand: Evidence from term loan repayments," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    9. Qiao Liu & Qiaowei Shen & Zhenghua Li & Shu Chen, 2021. "Stimulating Consumption at Low Budget: Evidence from a Large-Scale Policy Experiment Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(12), pages 7291-7307, December.
    10. Juwon Seo, 2018. "Randomization Tests for Equality in Dependence Structure," Papers 1811.02105, arXiv.org.
    11. Lukas, Moritz & Nöth, Markus, 2022. "Voluntary minimum repayments and borrower heterogeneity: Evidence from revolving consumer credit," Journal of Banking & Finance, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    12. Dobkin, Carlos & Puller, Steven L., 2007. "The effects of government transfers on monthly cycles in drug abuse, hospitalization and mortality," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(11-12), pages 2137-2157, December.
    13. Sumit Agarwal & Chunlin Liu & Nicholas S. Souleles, 2007. "The Reaction of Consumer Spending and Debt to Tax Rebates-Evidence from Consumer Credit Data," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 115(6), pages 986-1019, December.
    14. Orazio P. Attanasio & Guglielmo Weber, 2010. "Consumption and Saving: Models of Intertemporal Allocation and Their Implications for Public Policy," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 48(3), pages 693-751, September.
    15. Sirisankanan, Aeggarchat, 2023. "The Response of Household Savings to Anticipated Income Changes: Natural Experiments Using Natural and Non-Natural Factors," Journal of Economic Development, The Economic Research Institute, Chung-Ang University, vol. 48(2), pages 1-31, June.
    16. Baugh, Brian & Ben-David, Itzhak & Park, Hoonsuk, 2013. "Disentangling Financial Constraints, Precautionary Savings, and Myopia: Household Behavior Surrounding Federal Tax Returns," Working Paper Series 2013-20, Ohio State University, Charles A. Dice Center for Research in Financial Economics.
    17. DeJuan, Joseph P. & Seater, John J., 2007. "Testing the cross-section implications of Friedman's permanent income hypothesis," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(3), pages 820-849, April.
    18. Satoshi Shimizutani, 2017. "College tuition payment and household consumption in Japan," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 15(1), pages 265-285, March.
    19. María Pía Olivero & Mikheil Dvalishvili, 2023. "What do fiscal stimulus packages mean for household debt?," Contemporary Economic Policy, Western Economic Association International, vol. 41(2), pages 282-299, April.
    20. Andreas Fagereng & Martin B. Holm & Gisle J. Natvik, 2021. "MPC Heterogeneity and Household Balance Sheets," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(4), pages 1-54, October.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:unu:wpaper:wp-2010-125. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Siméon Rapin (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/widerfi.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.