David Roodman's Microfinance Open Book Blog

For almost three years, I've been citing a single randomized study suggesting that microsavings does good. By Pascaline Dupas and Jonathan Robinson, it found that offering a savings account to market vendors in Kenya increased their investment, income, and spending on average. The account was a commitment savings account, meaning that it was expensive or impossible to quickly get one’s money out once in. This commitment device mainly appeared to help women.