IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/csa/wpaper/2018-19.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Are the poor so present-biased?

Author

Listed:
  • Rachel Cassidy

Abstract

Estimates of “present-bias” among the poor may be exaggerated if poor individuals are credit-constrained and expect to have greater liquidity in the future. I conduct an experiment in rural Pakistan which provides causal evidence of this effect. I use windfalls to generate fully exogenous variation in subjects’ liquidity constraints. I show that fluctuating liquidity has a significant and sizeable effect on measures of time-inconsistency, which does not operate via cognitive functioning. Importantly, I establish that the causation runs from tighter liquidity constraints to appearing “present-biased” — rather than truly present-biased individuals making choices which lead to tighter liquidity constraints.

Suggested Citation

  • Rachel Cassidy, 2018. "Are the poor so present-biased?," CSAE Working Paper Series 2018-19, Centre for the Study of African Economies, University of Oxford.
    • Handle: RePEc:csa:wpaper:2018-19
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://ora.ox.ac.uk/objects/uuid:4bbd6eca-cdcf-4242-92cd-165f9773bb1a
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Andersen, Steffen & Harrison, Glenn W. & Lau, Morten I. & Rutström, E. Elisabet, 2014. "Discounting behavior: A reconsideration," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 15-33.
    2. Thomas Dohmen & Armin Falk & David Huffman & Uwe Sunde, 2010. "Are Risk Aversion and Impatience Related to Cognitive Ability?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(3), pages 1238-1260, June.
    3. Deaton, Angus, 1991. "Saving and Liquidity Constraints," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1221-1248, September.
    4. Abhijit Banerjee & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2010. "The Shape of Temptation: Implications for the Economic Lives of the Poor," NBER Working Papers 15973, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Ned Augenblick & Muriel Niederle & Charles Sprenger, 2015. "Editor's Choice Working over Time: Dynamic Inconsistency in Real Effort Tasks," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 130(3), pages 1067-1115.
    6. Uttara Balakrishnan & Johannes Haushofer & Pamela Jakiela, 2020. "How soon is now? Evidence of present bias from convex time budget experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 294-321, June.
    7. Harris, Christopher & Laibson, David, 2001. "Dynamic Choices of Hyperbolic Consumers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 69(4), pages 935-957, July.
    8. Mohammed Abdellaoui & Han Bleichrodt & Olivier l'Haridon & Corina Paraschiv, 2013. "Is There One Unifying Concept of Utility?An Experimental Comparison of Utility Under Risk and Utility Over Time," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(9), pages 2153-2169, September.
    9. Steffen Andersen & Glenn Harrison & Morten Lau & E. Rutström, 2009. "Elicitation using multiple price list formats," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 12(3), pages 365-366, September.
    10. Nava Ashraf & Dean Karlan & Wesley Yin, 2006. "Tying Odysseus to the Mast: Evidence From a Commitment Savings Product in the Philippines," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(2), pages 635-672.
    11. Noor, Jawwad, 2009. "Hyperbolic discounting and the standard model: Eliciting discount functions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2077-2083, September.
    12. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    13. Michal Bauer & Julie Chytilova & Jonathan Morduch, 2012. "Behavioral Foundations of Microcredit: Experimental and Survey Evidence from Rural India," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 102(2), pages 1118-1139, April.
    14. Steffen Andersen & Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & E. Elisabet Rutström, 2013. "Discounting Behaviour and the Magnitude Effect: Evidence from a Field Experiment in Denmark," Economica, London School of Economics and Political Science, vol. 80(320), pages 670-697, October.
    15. Miriam Bruhn & David McKenzie, 2009. "In Pursuit of Balance: Randomization in Practice in Development Field Experiments," American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, American Economic Association, vol. 1(4), pages 200-232, October.
    16. Glenn W. Harrison & Morten I. Lau & Melonie B. Williams, 2002. "Estimating Individual Discount Rates in Denmark: A Field Experiment," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 92(5), pages 1606-1617, December.
    17. Quang Nguyen & Colin Camerer & Tomomi Tanaka, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences Linking Experimental and Household Data from Vietnam," Post-Print halshs-00547090, HAL.
    18. Gerber, Anke & Rohde, Kirsten I.M., 2015. "Eliciting discount functions when baseline consumption changes over time," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 116(C), pages 56-64.
    19. Uzma Afzal & Giovanna d’Adda & Marcel Fafchamps & Simon Quinn & Farah Said, 2018. "Two Sides of the Same Rupee? Comparing Demand for Microcredit and Microsaving in a Framed Field Experiment in Rural Pakistan," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 128(614), pages 2161-2190, September.
    20. Sarojini Hirshleifer & David McKenzie & Rita Almeida & Cristobal Ridao‐Cano, 2016. "The Impact of Vocational Training for the Unemployed: Experimental Evidence from Turkey," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 126(597), pages 2115-2146, November.
    21. Abhijit V. Banerjee & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2008. "Limited Attention and Income Distribution," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(2), pages 489-493, May.
    22. Maribeth Coller & Melonie Williams, 1999. "Eliciting Individual Discount Rates," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 2(2), pages 107-127, December.
    23. Esther Duflo & Michael Kremer & Jonathan Robinson, 2011. "Nudging Farmers to Use Fertilizer: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Kenya," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 101(6), pages 2350-2390, October.
    24. Robin Cubitt & Daniel Read, 2007. "Can intertemporal choice experiments elicit time preferences for consumption?," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 10(4), pages 369-389, December.
    25. Mark Dean & Anja Sautmann, 2014. "Credit Constraints and the Measurement of Time Preferences," Working Papers 2014-1, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    26. David McKenzie, 2017. "Identifying and Spurring High-Growth Entrepreneurship: Experimental Evidence from a Business Plan Competition," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(8), pages 2278-2307, August.
    27. Tavneet Suri, 2011. "Selection and Comparative Advantage in Technology Adoption," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 79(1), pages 159-209, January.
    28. Leandro S. Carvalho & Stephan Meier & Stephanie W. Wang, 2016. "Poverty and Economic Decision-Making: Evidence from Changes in Financial Resources at Payday," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 106(2), pages 260-284, February.
    29. Yoram Halevy, 2008. "Strotz Meets Allais: Diminishing Impatience and the Certainty Effect," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 1145-1162, June.
    30. Tomomi Tanaka & Colin F. Camerer & Quang Nguyen, 2010. "Risk and Time Preferences: Linking Experimental and Household Survey Data from Vietnam," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(1), pages 557-571, March.
    31. Epper, Thomas, 2015. "Income Expectations, Limited Liquidity, and Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice," Economics Working Paper Series 1519, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    32. Janssens, Wendy & Kramer, Berber & Swart, Lisette, 2017. "Be patient when measuring hyperbolic discounting: Stationarity, time consistency and time invariance in a field experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 77-90.
    33. Yoram Halevy, 2015. "Time Consistency: Stationarity and Time Invariance," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 83, pages 335-352, January.
    34. Ted O'Donoghue & Matthew Rabin, 2015. "Present Bias: Lessons Learned and to Be Learned," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 105(5), pages 273-279, May.
    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. Ernst-Jan Bruijn & Gerrit Antonides, 2022. "Poverty and economic decision making: a review of scarcity theory," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 92(1), pages 5-37, February.
    2. Cassidy, Rachel & Fafchamps, Marcel, 2020. "Banker my neighbour: Matching and financial intermediation in savings groups," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 145(C).
    3. Dawoon Jung & Tushar Bharati & Seungwoo Chin, 2021. "Does Education Affect Time Preference? Evidence from Indonesia," Economic Development and Cultural Change, University of Chicago Press, vol. 69(4), pages 1451-1499.
    4. Massimo Filippini & Nilkanth Kumar & Suchita Srinivasan, 2021. "Behavioral Anomalies and Fuel Efficiency: Evidence from Motorcycles in Nepal," CER-ETH Economics working paper series 21/353, CER-ETH - Center of Economic Research (CER-ETH) at ETH Zurich.

    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. Rachel Cassidy, 2018. "Are the poor so present-biased?," IFS Working Papers W18/24, Institute for Fiscal Studies.
    2. Ubfal, Diego, 2016. "How general are time preferences? Eliciting good-specific discount rates," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 118(C), pages 150-170.
    3. Bonan, Jacopo & LeMay-Boucher, Philippe & Scott, Douglas, 2022. "Can hypothetical measures of time preference predict actual and incentivised behaviour? Evidence from Senegal," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 159(C).
    4. Jindrich Matousek & Tomas Havranek & Zuzana Irsova, 2022. "Individual discount rates: a meta-analysis of experimental evidence," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 25(1), pages 318-358, February.
    5. James Andreoni & Michael Callen & Karrar Hussain & Muhammad Yasir Khan & Charles Sprenger, 2023. "Using Preference Estimates to Customize Incentives: An Application to Polio Vaccination Drives in Pakistan," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 21(4), pages 1428-1477.
    6. Uttara Balakrishnan & Johannes Haushofer & Pamela Jakiela, 2020. "How soon is now? Evidence of present bias from convex time budget experiments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 23(2), pages 294-321, June.
    7. Kureishi, Wataru & Paule-Paludkiewicz, Hannah & Tsujiyama, Hitoshi & Wakabayashi, Midori, 2021. "Time preferences over the life cycle and household saving puzzles," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 123-139.
    8. Janssens, Wendy & Kramer, Berber & Swart, Lisette, 2017. "Be patient when measuring hyperbolic discounting: Stationarity, time consistency and time invariance in a field experiment," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 77-90.
    9. Irvine, Alastair & van der Pol, Marjon & Phimister, Euan, 2019. "A comparison of professional and private time preferences of General Practitioners," Social Science & Medicine, Elsevier, vol. 222(C), pages 256-264.
    10. Jacopo Bonan & Philippe LeMay-Boucher & Douglas Scott, 2016. "Can Hypothetical Time Discounting Rates Predict Actual Behaviour: Evidence from a Randomized Experiment," Working Papers 2016.74, Fondazione Eni Enrico Mattei.
    11. Epper, Thomas, 2015. "Income Expectations, Limited Liquidity, and Anomalies in Intertemporal Choice," Economics Working Paper Series 1519, University of St. Gallen, School of Economics and Political Science.
    12. Carvalho, Leandro S. & Prina, Silvia & Sydnor, Justin, 2016. "The effect of saving on risk attitudes and intertemporal choices," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 41-52.
    13. Mark Dean & Anja Sautmann, 2014. "Credit Constraints and the Measurement of Time Preferences," Working Papers 2014-1, Brown University, Department of Economics.
    14. Dániel Horn & Hubert János Kiss, 2020. "Time preferences and their life outcome correlates: Evidence from a representative survey," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 15(7), pages 1-26, July.
    15. James Andreoni & Christina Gravert & Michael A. Kuhn & Silvia Saccardo & Yang Yang, 2018. "Arbitrage Or Narrow Bracketing? On Using Money to Measure Intertemporal Preferences," NBER Working Papers 25232, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Sebastian Schweighofer-Kodritsch, 2015. "Time Preferences and Bargaining," STICERD - Theoretical Economics Paper Series /2015/568, Suntory and Toyota International Centres for Economics and Related Disciplines, LSE.
    17. James Andreoni & Michael Callen & Muhammad Karrar Hussain & Muhammad Yasir Khan & Charles Sprenger, 2017. "Creating Investment Scheme with State Space Modeling ," CIRJE F-Series CIRJE-F-1039, CIRJE, Faculty of Economics, University of Tokyo.
    18. Mark Dean & Anja Sautmann, 2021. "Credit Constraints and the Measurement of Time Preferences," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 103(1), pages 119-135, March.
    19. Damon Jones & Aprajit Mahajan, 2015. "Time-Inconsistency and Saving: Experimental Evidence from Low-Income Tax Filers," NBER Working Papers 21272, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. W. David Bradford & Paul Dolan & Matteo M. Galizzi, 2019. "Looking ahead: Subjective time perception and individual discounting," Journal of Risk and Uncertainty, Springer, vol. 58(1), pages 43-69, February.

    More about this item

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:csa:wpaper:2018-19. 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: Julia Coffey (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.