IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/jafrec/v25y2016i3p418-438..html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Formal Insurance and the Dynamics of Social Capital: Experimental Evidence from Uganda

Author

Listed:
  • Francesco Cecchi
  • Jan Duchoslav
  • Erwin Bulte

Abstract

We explore how the introduction of formal insurance affects the within-village dynamics of social capital in south-western Uganda. As a proxy for social capital, we use contributions in a public goods game. Consistent with existing evidence, our data suggest formal insurance crowds out social capital. However, and surprisingly, overall contributions to the common pot do not go down because insurance adopters reduce their contributions. Instead, social capital erodes because the uninsured, or the local poor, lower their contributions. We discuss what might explain this finding.

Suggested Citation

  • Francesco Cecchi & Jan Duchoslav & Erwin Bulte, 2016. "Formal Insurance and the Dynamics of Social Capital: Experimental Evidence from Uganda," Journal of African Economies, Centre for the Study of African Economies, vol. 25(3), pages 418-438.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:25:y:2016:i:3:p:418-438.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejw002
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Meike Will & Jürgen Groeneveld & Karin Frank & Birgit Müller, 2021. "Informal risk-sharing between smallholders may be threatened by formal insurance: Lessons from a stylized agent-based model," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 16(3), pages 1-18, March.
    2. Nikolov, Plamen & Bonci, Matthew, 2020. "Do public program benefits crowd out private transfers in developing countries? A critical review of recent evidence," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 134(C).
    3. Nathaniel Jensen & Jose Lopez-Rivas & Karlijn Morsink & Emma Rikken, 2025. "Weathering Conflict: The Effect of Resource Shocks on Livestock Raids," CSAE Working Paper Series 2025-02, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    4. Grimm, Michael & Hartwig, Renate & Reitmann, Ann-Kristin & Bocoum, Fadima Yaya, 2021. "Inter-household transfers: An empirical investigation of the income-transfer relationship with novel data from Burkina Faso," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 144(C).
    5. Toman Barsbai & Victoria Licuanan & Andreas Steinmayr & Erwin Tiongson & Dean Yang, 2020. "Information and the Acquisition of Social Network Connections," NBER Working Papers 27346, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    6. Stefano Caria & Simon Franklin & Marc Witte, 2023. "Searching with Friends," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 41(4), pages 887-922.
    7. Lin, Wanchuan & Meng, Juanjuan & Weng, Xi, 2020. "Formal insurance and informal risk sharing dynamics," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 180(C), pages 837-863.
    8. Murphy, David M.A., 2023. "Sobriety, social capital, and village network structures," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 166(C).
    9. Abay, Kibrom A. & Nigus, Halefom Yigzaw, 2024. "Cooperation among community leaders: The role of women’s leadership and exposure to conflict," IFPRI discussion papers 2273, International Food Policy Research Institute (IFPRI).
    10. Halefom Yigzaw Nigus & Eleonora Nillesen & Pierre Mohnen, 2024. "The effect of weather index insurance on social capital: Evidence from rural Ethiopia," Journal of Risk & Insurance, The American Risk and Insurance Association, vol. 91(1), pages 121-159, March.
    11. Barsbai, Toman & Licuanan, Victoria & Steinmayr, Andreas & Tiongson, Erwin & Yang, Dean, 2024. "Information and immigrant settlement," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 170(C).
    12. Stoeffler, Quentin & Opuz, Gülce, 2022. "Price, information and product quality: Explaining index insurance demand in Burkina Faso," Food Policy, Elsevier, vol. 108(C).
    13. Gebrekidan, Tnsue, 2021. "Effect of Index-Based Livestock Insurance on Uninsured Poultry Production: Experimental Evidence from Southern Ethiopia," 2021 Conference, August 17-31, 2021, Virtual 315847, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    14. Nigus, Halefom & Nillesen, Eleonora & Mohnen, Pierre, 2018. "The effect of weather index insurance on social capital: Experimental evidence from Ethiopia," MERIT Working Papers 2018-007, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    15. Strupat, Christoph & Klohn, Florian, 2018. "Crowding out of solidarity? Public health insurance versus informal transfer networks in Ghana," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 104(C), pages 212-221.
    16. Hanna Freudenreich & Marcela Ibanez & Stephan Dietrich & Oliver Musshoff, 2018. "Formal insurance, risk sharing, and the dynamics of other-regarding preferences," Department of Agricultural and Rural Development (DARE) Discussion Papers 266532, Georg-August-Universitaet Goettingen, Department of Agricultural Economics and Rural Development (DARE).
    17. Tekalign Gutu Sakketa & Dan Maggio & John McPeak, 2023. "The Protective Role of Index Insurance in the Experience of Violent Conflict: Evidence from Ethiopia," HiCN Working Papers 385, Households in Conflict Network.
    18. Temesgen Belissa & Robert Lensink & Anne Winkel, 2020. "Effects of Index Insurance on Demand and Supply of Credit: Evidence from Ethiopia," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(5), pages 1511-1531, October.
    19. Putman, Daniel S., 2020. "The Scope of Risk Pooling," 2020 Annual Meeting, July 26-28, Kansas City, Missouri 304480, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association.
    20. Sakketa, Tekalign Gutu & Maggio, Dan & McPeak, John, 2024. "The Protective Role of Index Insurance in the Experience of Violent Conflict: Evidence from Ethiopia," IAAE 2024 Conference, August 2-7, 2024, New Delhi, India 344274, International Association of Agricultural Economists (IAAE).
    21. Christoph Strupat, 2022. "Social Protection and Social Cohesion in Times of the COVID-19 Pandemic: Evidence from Kenya," The European Journal of Development Research, Palgrave Macmillan;European Association of Development Research and Training Institutes (EADI), vol. 34(3), pages 1320-1357, June.
    22. Sakketa, Tekalign Gutu & Maggio, Dan & McPeak, John, 2025. "The protective role of index insurance in the experience of violent conflict: Evidence from Ethiopia," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 174(C).

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    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:oup:jafrec:v:25:y:2016:i:3:p:418-438.. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/csaoxuk.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.