IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/hasite/0040.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can the Poor Be Mobilized? Cooperation and Public Goods in Rural India

Author

Listed:
  • Olofsgård, Anders

    (Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics)

  • Joshi, Shareen

    (Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service, Georgetown University)

  • Desai, Raj M

    (Edmund A. Walsh School of Foreign Service and Department of Government, Georgetown University, and The Brookings Institution)

Abstract

High coordination costs are often blamed for the low quality of public goods available to the poor. Participatory development programs have sought to lower these costs by improving trust and cooperation, but the evidence of their impact is mixed. We examine financial “self-help” groups in one of the poorest districts in India, using a unique combination of a village-randomized controlled trial and a lab-in-the-field experiment. A survey of 1,600 women before and after the intervention shows that the presence of these groups improved access to, and quality of, a critical local public good: water. Public goods games played with 184 participants in a subset of control and treatment villages indicate that cooperative norms are stronger where self-help groups were present. We find little evidence that membership leads to a convergence of tastes among group members. These results suggest that, in contrast to traditional community initiatives, self-help groups can build durable social capital in poor communities.

Suggested Citation

  • Olofsgård, Anders & Joshi, Shareen & Desai, Raj M, 2016. "Can the Poor Be Mobilized? Cooperation and Public Goods in Rural India," SITE Working Paper Series 40, Stockholm School of Economics, Stockholm Institute of Transition Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:hhs:hasite:0040
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://swopec.hhs.se/hasite/papers/hasite0040.pdf
    File Function: Complete Rendering
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Hainmueller, Jens, 2012. "Entropy Balancing for Causal Effects: A Multivariate Reweighting Method to Produce Balanced Samples in Observational Studies," Political Analysis, Cambridge University Press, vol. 20(1), pages 25-46, January.
    2. Hainmueller, Jens & Xu, Yiqing, 2013. "ebalance: A Stata Package for Entropy Balancing," Journal of Statistical Software, Foundation for Open Access Statistics, vol. 54(i07).
    3. Priya Basu, 2006. "Improving Access to Finance for India's Rural Poor," World Bank Publications - Books, The World Bank Group, number 6927, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Desai, Raj M. & Olofsgård, Anders, 2019. "Can the poor organize? Public goods and self-help groups in rural India," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 121(C), pages 33-52.
    2. Daniel Fackler & Lisa Hölscher & Claus Schnabel & Antje Weyh, 2022. "Does working at a start-up pay off?," Small Business Economics, Springer, vol. 58(4), pages 2211-2233, April.
    3. Renata Baborska & Emilio Hernandez & Emiliano Magrini & Cristian Morales-Opazo, 2020. "The impact of financial inclusion on rural food security experience: A perspective from low-and middle-income countries," Review of Development Finance Journal, Chartered Institute of Development Finance, vol. 10(2), pages 1-18.
    4. Hetschko, Clemens & Schöb, Ronnie & Wolf, Tobias, 2020. "Income support, employment transitions and well-being," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 66(C).
    5. Agarwal, Vikas & Barber, Brad M. & Cheng, Si & Hameed, Allaudeen & Shanker, Harshini & Yasuda, Ayako, 2023. "Do investors overvalue startups? Evidence from the junior stakes of mutual funds," CFR Working Papers 23-04, University of Cologne, Centre for Financial Research (CFR).
    6. Schwettmann, Lars, 2015. "Decision solution, data manipulation and trust: The (un-)willingness to donate organs in Germany in critical times," Health Policy, Elsevier, vol. 119(7), pages 980-989.
    7. Müller, Tobias & Schmid, Christian & Gerfin, Michael, 2023. "Rents for Pills: Financial incentives and physician behavior," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(C).
    8. Shams, Syed & Bose, Sudipta & Gunasekarage, Abeyratna, 2022. "Does corporate tax avoidance promote managerial empire building?," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 18(1).
    9. Aboal, Diego & Tacsir, Ezequiel, 2016. "The impact of ex-ante subsidies to researchers on researcher's productivity: Evidence from a developing country," MERIT Working Papers 2016-019, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    10. Themann, Michael & Koch, Nicolas, 2021. "Catching up and falling behind: Cross-country evidence on the impact of the EU ETS on firm productivity," Ruhr Economic Papers 904, RWI - Leibniz-Institut für Wirtschaftsforschung, Ruhr-University Bochum, TU Dortmund University, University of Duisburg-Essen.
    11. Everding, Jakob & Marcus, Jan, 2020. "The effect of unemployment on the smoking behavior of couples," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 29(2), pages 154-170.
    12. Clarkson, Peter & Gao, Ru & Herbohn, Kathleen, 2020. "The relationship between a firm’s information environment and its cash holding decision," Journal of Contemporary Accounting and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(2).
    13. Ehrenfried, Felix & Holzner, Christian, 2019. "Dynamics and endogeneity of firms’ recruitment behaviour," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 63-84.
    14. Vincenzo Carrieri & Apostolos Davillas & Andrew M. Jones, 2023. "Equality of opportunity and the expansion of higher education in the UK," Review of Income and Wealth, International Association for Research in Income and Wealth, vol. 69(4), pages 861-885, December.
    15. Best, Rohan & Sinha, Kompal, 2021. "Fuel poverty policy: Go big or go home insulation," Energy Economics, Elsevier, vol. 97(C).
    16. Abigail Allen & Melissa F. Lewis‐Western & Kristen Valentine, 2022. "The Innovation and Reporting Consequences of Financial Regulation for Young Life‐Cycle Firms," Journal of Accounting Research, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 60(1), pages 45-95, March.
    17. Kazuma Sato, 2020. "Does marriage improve subjective health in Japan?," The Japanese Economic Review, Springer, vol. 71(2), pages 247-286, April.
    18. Clemens Fuest & Felix Hugger & Samina Sultan & Jing Xing, 2022. "What drives Chinese overseas M&A investment? Evidence from micro data," Review of International Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 30(1), pages 306-344, February.
    19. Adhikari, Bibek & Alm, James & Harris, Timothy F., 2021. "Small business tax compliance under third-party reporting," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 203(C).
    20. Bossler Mario & Gürtzgen Nicole & Betzl Ute & Feist Lisa & Lochner Benjamin, 2020. "The German Minimum Wage: Effects on Productivity, Profitability, and Investments," Journal of Economics and Statistics (Jahrbuecher fuer Nationaloekonomie und Statistik), De Gruyter, vol. 240(2-3), pages 321-350, April.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    self-help groups; RCT; lab-in-the-field; public goods games; India;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • F63 - International Economics - - Economic Impacts of Globalization - - - Economic Development
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • O12 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
    • O17 - Economic Development, Innovation, Technological Change, and Growth - - Economic Development - - - Formal and Informal Sectors; Shadow Economy; Institutional Arrangements

    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:hhs:hasite:0040. 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: Dominick Nilsson (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sihhsse.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.