We explore the impact of reduced transaction costs on risk sharing by estimating the effects of a mobile money innovation on consumption. In our panel sample, adoption of the innovation increased from 43 to 70 percent. We find that, while shocks reduce consumption by 7 percent for nonusers, the...

We report the results of a randomized field experiment aimed at improving the safety of long-distance mini-busses or matatus in Kenya. Our intervention combines evocative messages aimed at motivating passengers to speak up against bad driving with a lottery that rewards matatu drivers for...

Flexible Spending Accounts (FSAs) subsidize out-of-pocket health expenses not covered by employer-provided health insurance, making health care cheaper ex post, but also reducing the incentive to insure. We use a cross section of .rm-level data to show that FSAs are indeed associated with...