1,720,976 research outputs found
Nudging Payment Behaviour: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Pay-as-You-Go Off-Grid Electricity
Full text linkThis is the author accepted manuscript. The final version is available from Oxford University Press via the DOI in this recordData availability:
Anonymised, unit-level data along with the do files that are required for replication of the findings presented in this paper can be provided on request.This paper reports results from a randomized control trial with a pay-as-you-go (PAYG) solar system provider in Pakistan. In the default treatment, customers are told the amount to pay every month to keep the system active. In a first treatment, customers are assisted in planning this monthly payment. A second treatment discloses that payments can be made flexibly within the month. This disclosure may reduce contract cancellation by helping minimize transaction costs but may increase contract complexity and reduce discipline. A third treatment combines flexibility with assistance in planning payments. Disclosing flexibility increases contract cancellation relative to the default, but combining flexibility with planning offsets this effect. Treatment effects appear stronger among users facing high mental constraints and transaction costs. These findings support the idea that behavioral factors, such as inattention and commitment problems, lay behind the negative impact of flexibility on cancellation. The results suggest that providers of PAYG systems may face a trade-off between disclosing complex contractual features and customer retention. Planning helps customers handle the added complexity.International Growth CentreEuropean Union FP
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
Nudging Payment Behavior: Evidence from a Field Experiment on Pay-as-You-Go Off-Grid Electricity
No full textVariations on the Author
Full text link“Variations on the Author” discusses two of Eduardo Coutinho’s recent films (Um Dia na Vida, from 2010, and Últimas Conversas, posthumously released in 2015) and their contribution to the general question of documentary authorship. The director’s filmography is characterized by a consistent yet self-effacing form of authorial self-inscription: Coutinho often features as an interviewer that rather than express opinions propels discourses; an interviewer that is good at listening. This mode of self-inscription characterizes him as an author who is not expressive but who is nonetheless markedly present on the screen. In Um Dia na Vida, however, Coutinho is completely absent form the image, while Últimas Conversas, on the contrary, includes a confessional prologue that moves the director from the margins to the center of his films. This article examines the ways in which these works stand out in the filmography of a director who offers new insights into the notion of cinematic authorship
Microcredit with voluntary contributions and zero interest rate: Evidence from Pakistan
Full text linkWe study a unique microcredit model with zero interest rate and voluntary contributions, used by Akhuwat, a microfinance organization operating in Pakistan since 2001. Borrowers are encouraged to give any amount they wish to the organization every month, in addition to the instalment for the repayment of principal. These voluntary contributions result in an implicit interest rate of around 4.5%. The analysis of monthly data on voluntary contributions provide evidence that the organization is rewarding borrowers for their contributions by giving them repeat loans and that borrowers are strategically timing these voluntary contributions through their loan cycle to maximize impact. In the case of joint liability loans, borrowers in poorly performing groups make on average higher voluntary contributions, and voluntary contributions in a previous loan cycle correlate with borrower discipline in a subsequent loan cycle. Thus, voluntary contributions can signal borrower quality, and joint liability borrowers appear to be using them to signal their quality independently of their group
Appropriate Similarity Measures for Author Cocitation Analysis
Full text linkWe provide a number of new insights into the methodological discussion about author cocitation analysis. We first argue that the use of the Pearson correlation for measuring the similarity between authors’ cocitation profiles is not very satisfactory. We then discuss what kind of similarity measures may be used as an alternative to the Pearson correlation. We consider three similarity measures in particular. One is the well-known cosine. The other two similarity measures have not been used before in the bibliometric literature. Finally, we show by means of an example that our findings have a high practical relevance.information science;Pearson correlation;cosine;similarity measure;author cocitation analysis
Essays on Small Scale Finance and Recipient Behaviour
No full textThese essays consider various aspects of the access to finance to micro-entrepreneurs who remain outside the purview of the banking sector primarily due to lack of collateral. An innovative way to provide access to finance - microfinance - originated from Bangladesh and has since then spread to all over the world. Evidence points to micro-enterprises earning returns well above market interest rate. It is therefore puzzling that hardly any study has found a significant impact on various development indicators for households receiving a microcredit loan. This coupled with high indebtedness and defaults by borrowers resulting in the collapse of several microfinance organizations across the world has raised questions about the fundamentals of the microcredit model and led to a rethinking of microfinance at large. In line with this, we look at an alternative model of microcredit with zero interest rate and voluntary contributions being used by Akhuwat, a microfinance organization in Pakistan. Chapter 2 has details about this organization and chapter 3 about a telephone survey of the borrowers of the organization that was conducted to collect information in addition to that in the organization database.
In chapter 4, the analysis of monthly data on voluntary contributions provide evidence that the organization is rewarding borrowers for their contributions by giving them repeat loans and that borrowers are strategically timing these voluntary contributions through their loan cycles to maximize impact. In the case of joint liability loans, borrowers in poorly performing groups make on average higher voluntary contributions, and voluntary contributions in a previous loan cycle correlate with borrower discipline in a subsequent loan cycle. Thus, voluntary contributions can signal borrower quality, and joint liability borrowers appear to be using them to signal their quality independently of their group.
Microcredit loans were traditionally extended to groups of people who were held jointly liable for the payments of each other. However, there is no clear evidence that joint liability does lead to better borrower performance and recent years have seen a shift towards individual liability lending. In Chapter 5, utilizing the exogenous shift from individual to joint liability lending by a microfinance organization in Pakistan, we find evidence of significant improvement in borrower discipline. We also use the exogenous variation in number of months borrowers had till the expiry of their individual liability loans at the time of the shift to study the kind of groups they formed. Using this time that borrowers had as an instrument, we find that they are more likely to form groups with people they knew from before and met weekly. The time that borrower had to form group also correlated positively with borrower discipline.
Chapter 6 investigates the impact on micro-entrepreneur households of unconditional transfers in a Randomized Control Trial setting. In a situation of no commitment, it looks at the second order effects on the household of an exogenous shock to the enterprise. Even with no repayment for principal or additional interest charge, there is no significant impact on the consumption and education expenditures of these households. We focus on the demographic and labour supply response and find that households of male and female owned enterprises adjust differently. Households of male run enterprises experienced a rise in fertility while those of women saw a decline in the number of other women working in the household and thereby in overall hours worked in the household. For male run enterprise households, there appears to be no substitution away from work towards leisure as the household feels richer. We did not find evidence that the rise in fertility is a pure income effect and so it appears to be associated with different choices made by the two genders when in charge of resources
Repaying microcredit loans: A natural experiment on liability structure
Full text linkMicrocredit loans were traditionally extended to groups of people. However, there is no clear evidence that joint liability does lead to better borrower performance and recent years have seen a shift towards individual liability lending. Utilizing the exogenous shift from individual to joint liability lending by a microfinance organization in Pakistan, we find evidence of significant improvement in borrower discipline. Borrowers are about 0.6 times as likely to miss a payment in any given month under joint liability relative to individual liability. We also use the exogenous variation in number of months borrowers had till the expiry of their individual liability loans at the time of the shift to study the kind of groups they formed. More time that borrowers had, the more likely they were to form groups with people they knew from before and met weekly. The time that borrower had to form group also correlated positively with borrower discipline
Dispelling the Myths Behind First-author Citation Counts
Full text linkWe conducted a full-scale evaluative citation analysis study of scholars in the XML research field to explore just how different from each other author rankings resulting from different citation counting methods actually are, and to demonstrate the capability of emerging data and tools on the Web in supporting more realistic citation counting methods. Our results contest some common arguments for the continued
use of first-author citation counts in the evaluation of scholars, such as high correlations between author rankings by first-author citation counts and other citation
counting methods, and high costs of using more realistic citation counting methods that are not well-supported by the ISI databases. It is argued that increasingly available digital full text research papers make it possible for citation analysis studies to go beyond what the ISI databases have directly supported and to employ more
sophisticated methods
- …
