Self-Timed Credit Contracts (STICC)

Last registered on May 10, 2018
View Trial History

Pre-Trial

Trial Information

General Information

Title
Self-Timed Credit Contracts (STICC)
RCT ID
AEARCTR-0002949
Initial registration date
May 08, 2018

Initial registration date is when the trial was registered.

It corresponds to when the registration was submitted to the Registry to be reviewed for publication.

First published
May 10, 2018, 3:42 PM EDT

First published corresponds to when the trial was first made public on the Registry after being reviewed.

Locations

Country
Kenya
Region
Western (Busia, Bungoma, Siaya districts)

Primary Investigator

Name
Erik Snowberg
Affiliation
California Institute of Technology
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Other Primary Investigator(s)

PI Name
Daniel Agness
PI Affiliation
Stanford University
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PI Name
Sylvain Chassang
PI Affiliation
New York University (NYU)
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PI Name
Pascaline Dupas
PI Affiliation
Stanford University
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Additional Trial Information

Status
On going
Start date
2018-04-01
End date
2019-12-31
Keywords
Agriculture, Finance & Microfinance
Additional Keywords
Contract Design, Experimentation
JEL code(s)
Secondary IDs
Abstract
In order to understand how loan contract design affects take up of credit, and eventual repayment rates, we test three different approaches of credit for a single product: an agricultural hip-pump. The first (“M500”) is a standard loan with monthly payments for a year. The second (“Freedom”) only requires that half of the payment be made by the middle of the year, and the full payment by the end of the year. A third contract (“Flex”) has basically the same payoff structure as the “Freedom” contract, but asks those who take up the product to make a repayment plan, and sends reminders when they pledged to pay a certain amount. This experiment uses the same sample as STRIP (https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/183/history/799), and consists of people who are in clusters where 2 people have already received the same agricultural hip-pump under different allocation mechanisms. As such, we will also be able to determine how different mechanisms to identify those who will “experiment” on the behalf of the cluster affect the demand for credit. We will also examine how a "group nudge" encouraging group ownership of the hip-pump through the provision of information relevant to group ownership affects take up of the credit offer, as well as group ownership.
External Link(s)

Registration Citation

Citation
Agness, Daniel et al. 2018. "Self-Timed Credit Contracts (STICC)." AEA RCT Registry. May 10. https://doi.org/10.1257/rct.2949-1.0
Former Citation
Agness, Daniel et al. 2018. "Self-Timed Credit Contracts (STICC)." AEA RCT Registry. May 10. https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/2949/history/29357
Sponsors & Partners

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Experimental Details

Interventions

Intervention(s)
Each household in our sample of 7,994 farming households from 390 clusters will be offered a randomly chosen experimental loan contract from a group of three. The first (“M500”) is a standard loan with monthly payments for a year. The second (“Freedom”) only requires that half of the payment be made by the middle of the year, and the full payment by the end of the year. A third contract (“Flex”) has basically the same payoff structure as the “Freedom” contract, but asks those who take up the product to make a repayment plan, and sends reminders when they pledged to pay a certain amount. A group nudge, randomized at the cluster level, will provide participants information about a common group ownership structure.
Intervention Start Date
2018-04-01
Intervention End Date
2018-08-01

Primary Outcomes

Primary Outcomes (end points)
Interest in each credit contract, rates of group ownership, take-up of contract (defined as the down payment of 1,000 KSH, at which point the participant will get the pump), full repayment rates. The last three will be examined overall, and conditional on group ownership
Primary Outcomes (explanation)

Secondary Outcomes

Secondary Outcomes (end points)
Patterns of repayment over time under each contract, difficulty and cost of repossessing pumps from those who are in default, assessments of loan structure, pump, and agricultural productivity
Secondary Outcomes (explanation)

Experimental Design

Experimental Design
All participants in the STRIP trial (https://www.socialscienceregistry.org/trials/183/history/799) who did not receive a free pump through STRIP, which constitutes 7994 farming households across 390 clusters will be offered one of three credit contracts. Loan contract types are stratified by cluster, so there will be an approximately equal number of each contract type offered in each cluster. The group nudge is randomized at the cluster level.
Experimental Design Details
Randomization Method
Randomization done in office by a computer.
Randomization Unit
Individual.
Was the treatment clustered?
No

Experiment Characteristics

Sample size: planned number of clusters
390, with only group nudge randomized by cluster
Sample size: planned number of observations
7,994, equally split between each contract type. 954 used for piloting, 7,040 for main sample.
Sample size (or number of clusters) by treatment arms
Roughly evenly split across all six arms (three contract types by receiving group nudge or not)
Minimum detectable effect size for main outcomes (accounting for sample design and clustering)
Supporting Documents and Materials
IRB

Institutional Review Boards (IRBs)

IRB Name
Stanford University Panel on Non-medical Human Subjects
IRB Approval Date
2017-05-19
IRB Approval Number
28662
Analysis Plan

Post-Trial

Post Trial Information

Study Withdrawal

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Intervention

Is the intervention completed?
No
Data Collection Complete
Data Publication

Data Publication

Is public data available?
No

Program Files

Program Files
Reports, Papers & Other Materials

Relevant Paper(s)

Reports & Other Materials