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UID:9becc5731b8b3134618c4b3b6722b67b
CATEGORIES:Seminars
CREATED:20170426T192614
SUMMARY:Vesall Nourani - Cornell University
DESCRIPTION;ENCODING=QUOTED-PRINTABLE:Consumption Smoothing, Returns to Investment and Community Agency\nAbstract
 :\n In this paper we ask whether households embedded within gift-giving net
 works in four Ghanaian villages allocate resources from windfall lottery ga
 ins in order to maximize network returns to investment and consumption. Lot
 teries are won either publicly, during a village festival, or privately aft
 er a random draw with researchers. Lotteries are held at the end of 4 out o
 f 5 survey collection rounds that take place within a year. We examine how 
 a given consumption or investment decision changes when as a function of ex
 ogenous variation in the lottery winnings of one’s network. Results indicat
 e that private lottery gains flow towards relatively food-insecure househol
 ds for the purpose of food expenditure, especially during the hungry season
  (prior to harvest), through private lottery winnings. These transfers go p
 rimarily from rich to poor. Second, we show that private winnings also flow
  towards wealthier households for the purpose of increasing investments in 
 human capital. Transfers flow primarily from poor households to rich. Addit
 ional checks show that households self-reporting illness shocks increase me
 dical expenditures when network links win private lotteries. These results 
 indicate that the community considers joint consumption and investment deci
 sions as a collective body by identifying households who benefit most from 
 additional resources. Public lottery winnings do not flow optimally along t
 he network and are instead “taxed” by less-well-off households. We interpre
 t these results within a conceptual framework in which social insurance, in
 vestment and taxes complement one another in a dynamic system of resource r
 edistribution within a community. We further hypothesize that communities c
 an increase the efficiency of this system by rewarding trustworthy behavior
  in the community. This hypothesis if confirmed in analysis suggesting that
  most investments from the private lottery winnings flow towards relatively
  trustworthy households.\n
DTSTAMP:20260422T050630Z
DTSTART:20170504T173000Z
DTEND:20170504T190000Z
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