whether benefits affect men and women equally. Using a randomized field experiment in Senegal and Burkina Faso, we compare … male and female farmers who are offered index-based agricultural insurance with those who are offered a variety of savings … savings for emergencies, even when we controlled for access to informal insurance and differences in crop choice. We …

. This paper shows that such reference dependence can affect savings in opposite directions depending on whether people face … liquidity constraints. Existing models for wealth and intertemporal choice predict that reference dependence reduces savings but … increase optimal savings for people without access to credit. Liquidity constraints force them to take part of an income loss …

activities, and in many rural communities, secure, safe, and convenient savings and payment facilities hardly existed. In …