The economics of rotating savings and credit associations
Name
28596085.pdf
Size
3.54 MB
Format
Adobe PDF
Checksum (MD5)
cf8ffd29fa4dbf7ac9b1d26f1b13ce3b
Author(s)
Besley, Timothy
Coate, Stephen
Loury, Glenn C.
Date Issued
1990
Publisher
MIT Center for Energy and Environmental Policy Research
Series/Report no.
Working paper (Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Center for Energy Policy Research) ; MIT-CEPR 90-014.
Abstract
This paper examines the role and performance of an institution for allocating savings which is observed world wide - rotating savings and credit associations. We develop a general equilibrium model of an economy with an indivisible durable consumption good and compare and contrast these informal institutions with credit markets and autarkic saving in terms of the properties of their allocations and the expected utility which they obtain. We also characterize Pareto efficient and expected utility maximizing allocations for our economy, which serve as useful benchmarks for the analysis. Among our results is the striking finding that rotating savings and credit associations which allocate funds randomly may sometimes yield a higher level of expected utility to prospective participants than would a perfect credit market.
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