ArticleJournal of development economics2025
Loose knots: Strong versus weak commitments to save for education in Uganda.
Article in Journal of development economics, 2025. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 6 papers.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
6 citing papers in PubMed.
- Article
- Healthcare Appointments as Commitment Devices.Economic journal (London, England) · 2025Article
- Which Early Withdrawal Penalty Attracts the Most Deposits to a Commitment Savings Account?Journal of public economics · 2020Article
- Evaluating the dissemination and scale-up of two evidence-based parenting interventions to reduce violence against children: study protocol.Implementation science communications · 2020Article
- Medium- and Long-Term Educational Consequences of Alternative Conditional Cash Transfer Designs: Experimental Evidence from Colombia.American economic journal. Applied economics · 2019Article
- Subsidies versus mental accounting nudges: Harnessing mobile payment systems to improve sanitation.Journal of development economics · 2018Article
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
2 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Commitment devices offer an opportunity to restrict future choices. However, strict commitments may deter participation. Using a school-based commitment savings program for children to save for educational expenses in Uganda, we compare an account fully committed to school expenses to an account with a weaker commitment (funds withdrawn in cash, rather than a voucher). Children save more in the weaker commitment treatment arm, and when combined with parental outreach spend more on educational supplies and score 0.10 standard deviations (standard error = 0.04) on test scores. The fully committed account yields no such educational improvements, and neither account finds impacts on secondary or downstream outcomes such as attendance, enrollment, or non-cognitive skills.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.