Estimating Treatment Effects with Big Data When Take-up is Low
Low take-up of interventions is a common problem faced by evaluations of development programs. A leading case is financial education programs, which are increasingly offered by governments, nonprofits, and financial institutions, but which often have very low voluntary participation rates. This poses a severe challenge for randomized experiments attempting to measure their impact. This study uses a large experiment on more than 100,000 credit card clients in Mexico. The study shows how the richness of financial data allows combining matching and difference-in-difference methods with the experiment to yield credible measures of impact, even with take-up rates below 1 percent. The findings show that a financial education workshop and personalized coaching result in a higher likelihood of paying credit cards on time, and of making more than the minimum payment, but do not reduce spending, resulting in higher profitability for the bank.
| Main Authors: | , , |
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| Format: | Journal Article biblioteca |
| Language: | en_US |
| Published: |
Published by Oxford University Press on behalf of the World Bank
2019-12-14
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| Subjects: | FINANCIAL LITERACY, CREDIT-CARD BEHAVIOR, LOW TAKE-UP, |
| Online Access: | https://openknowledge.worldbank.org/handle/10986/40781 |
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| Summary: | Low take-up of interventions is a common problem faced by evaluations of development programs. A leading case is financial education programs, which are increasingly offered by governments, nonprofits, and financial institutions, but which often have very low voluntary participation rates. This poses a severe challenge for randomized experiments attempting to measure their impact. This study uses a large experiment on more than 100,000 credit card clients in Mexico. The study shows how the richness of financial data allows combining matching and difference-in-difference methods with the experiment to yield credible measures of impact, even with take-up rates below 1 percent. The findings show that a financial education workshop and personalized coaching result in a higher likelihood of paying credit cards on time, and of making more than the minimum payment, but do not reduce spending, resulting in higher profitability for the bank. |
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