A growing share of the world population is getting access to a formal bank account. This allows a move from cash to account based payments. Grounding our hypothesis in behavioral economics, we conjecture that being paid on an account instead of in cash can play a major role in encouraging...

Access to formal banking is increasing across the world and may transform how people manage their finances. We report from a field experiment that randomly provides access to a bank account to a representative sample of villagers in rural India. The treated respondents save actively into the...

Worldwide, people are gaining access to a formal bank account, which allows account-based instead of cash payments. Based on a novel randomized control trial, we document that the payment method is an important determinant of savings behavior. In rural India, we study the effect on savings of...

Self-help groups (SHGs) are the most common form of microfinance in India. We provide evidence that SHGs, composed of women only, undertake collective actions for the provision of public goods. Using a theoretical model, we show that an elected official, whose aim is to maximise re-election...

We argue that economic inequality harms social provisions for the poor, but that higher political competition can mitigate this effect. We test this hypothesis using a large redistricting of electoral boundaries in India and find that higher inequality causes more post-neonatal infant deaths,...

Identity is an important determinant of economic behavior. A limitation of the existing literature is the focus on one identity dimension at a time. We show that the multiplicity of identity dimensions matters for economic behavior and that neglecting it may lead policy makers to overlook...

We show that inequality triggers social unrest in rural India. We develop a theoretical framework where social unrest is rationally used by civilians to oppose (unfair) surplus sharing by the elite. We predict that the probability of observing social unrest in a village increases with the sum of...

We investigate donor-beneficiary relationships in participatory development programs, where (i) communities are heterogeneous and dominated by the local elite, (ii) the elite strategically propose a project to the donor, knowing that the latter has imperfect knowledge of the needs of the target...