Evaluating the Impact of Commitment Savings Accounts Linked to Mobile Money

Author(s):  
Tricia Gonwa ◽  
Africa Gender Innovation Lab, World Bank Group
Author(s):  
Francis Kwaku Kuma ◽  
Isaiah Miencha ◽  
Abena Yeboah Abrahams ◽  
Rev Nelson Boadi

Economies ◽  
2021 ◽  
Vol 9 (2) ◽  
pp. 51
Author(s):  
Lorna Katusiime

This paper examines the effects of macroeconomic policy and regulatory environment on mobile money usage. Specifically, we develop an autoregressive distributed lag model to investigate the effect of key macroeconomic variables and mobile money tax on mobile money usage in Uganda. Using monthly data spanning the period March 2009 to September 2020, we find that in the short run, mobile money usage is positively affected by inflation while financial innovation, exchange rate, interest rates and mobile money tax negatively affect mobile money usage in Uganda. In the long run, mobile money usage is positively affected by economic activity, inflation and the COVID-19 pandemic crisis while mobile money customer balances, interest rate, exchange rate, financial innovation and mobile money tax negatively affect mobile money usage.


2021 ◽  
pp. 1-27
Author(s):  
Juliana Londoño-Vélez ◽  
Pablo Querubín

Abstract We study the impact of money on households during theCOVID-19 pandemic. In March 2020, Colombia rolled out a new unconditional cash transfer (UCT) to one million households in povertyworth $19 (PPP $55.6) and paid every 5-8 weeks. Using an RCT and linked administrative and survey data, we find the UCT had positive (albeit modest) effects on measures of household well-being (e.g., financial health, food access). Moreover, the UCT boosted support for emergency assistance to households and firms during the crisis and promoted social cooperation. Finally, we explore the bottlenecks in expanding mobile money during a pandemic.


2020 ◽  
Vol 12 (9) ◽  
pp. 3741
Author(s):  
Hiroyuki Egami ◽  
Tomoya Matsumoto

Lack of cash on hand is a significant obstacle in accessing healthcare services in developing countries. Many expectant mothers in the least developed countries do not receive sufficient care during pregnancy due to financial constraints. If such hurdles in accessing healthcare can be overcome, it will contribute to reduction in maternal and newborn mortality, which is a key target of Sustainable Development Goal 3. This study reports the first assessment of the impact of mobile money services on maternal care utilization. We hypothesize that mobile money adoption would motivate rural Ugandan women to receive antenatal care and to deliver their children at health facilities or with skilled birth attendants. By receiving remittances utilizing mobile money, poor rural households may obtain more cash in hand, which might change women’s health-seeking behavior. We apply community- and mother-fixed effects models with heterogeneity analysis to longitudinal panel data (the RePEAT [Research on Poverty, Environment, and Agricultural Technology] survey) of three waves (2009, 2012, and 2015). The analysis uses pregnancy reports of 2007–2015 from 586 rural Ugandan households. We find suggestive evidence that mobile money adoption positively affects the take-up of antenatal care. Heterogeneity analysis indicates that mobile money brings a larger benefit to geographically challenged households by easing their liquidity constraint as they face higher cost of traveling to distant health facilities. The models failed to reject the null hypothesis of no mobile money effect on the delivery-related outcome variables. This study suggests that promoting financial inclusion by means of mobile money motivates women in rural and remote areas to make antenatal care visits while the evidence of such effect is not found for take-up of facility delivery or delivery with skilled birth attendants.


2014 ◽  
Vol 104 (1) ◽  
pp. 183-223 ◽  
Author(s):  
William Jack ◽  
Tavneet Suri

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 consumption of user households is unaffected. The mechanisms underlying these consumption effects are increases in remittances received and the diversity of senders. We report robustness checks supporting these results and use the four-fold expansion of the mobile money agent network as a source of exogenous variation in access to the innovation. (JEL E42, G22, O16, O17, Z13)


Author(s):  
Michael Callen ◽  
Keesler Welch ◽  
Caitlin Rowe
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