Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Contract for Smoking Cessation

Giné, Xavier; Karlan, Dean; Zinman, Jonathan

doi:10.1257/app.2.4.213

Cited by 270 publications

(170 citation statements)

References 42 publications

(24 reference statements)

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“…These same principles have been applied in many other areas of health, such as smoking cessation, diabetes control and organ donation [25,68,69]. We make the case for their application in PMTCT to address demand-side challenges of uptake and retention as outlined in Table 1.…”

Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving utilization of and retention in PMTCT services: Can behavioral economics help?

Taylor

Buttenheim

2013

BMC Health Serv Res

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BackgroundThe most recent strategic call to action of the World Health Organization sets the elimination of pediatric HIV as a goal. While recent efforts have focused on building infrastructure and ensuring access to high-quality treatment, we must now turn our focus to the behavior change needed to eliminate vertical transmission. We make the case for the application of concepts from the field of behavioral economics to prevention of mother-to-child transmission (PMTCT) programs to more effectively address demand-side issues of uptake and retention.DiscussionWe introduce five concepts from the field of behavioral economics and discuss their application to PMTCT programs: 1) Mentor mothers who come from similar circumstances as PMTCT patients can serve as social references who provide temporally salient modeling of utilization of services and adherence to treatment. 2) Economic incentives, like cell phone minutes or food vouchers, that reward adherence to PMTCT protocols leverage present bias, the observation that people are generally biased toward immediate versus future awards. 3) Default bias, our preference for the default option, is already being used in many countries in the form of opt-out testing, and could be expanded to all PMTCT programs. 4) We are hardwired to avoid loss more than to pursue an equivalent gain. PMTCT programs can take advantage of loss aversion through the use of commitment contracts that incentivize mothers to return to the clinic in order to avoid both reputational and financial loss.SummaryEliminating vertical transmission of HIV is an ambitious goal. To close the remaining gap, innovations are needed to address demand for PMTCT services. Behavioral economics offers a set of tools that can be engineered into PMTCT programs to increase uptake and improve retention with minimal investment.

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Section: Discussionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Improving utilization of and retention in PMTCT services: Can behavioral economics help?

Taylor

Buttenheim

2013

BMC Health Serv Res

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“…Kremer, and Mullainathan (2010) documented 35% take-up of commitment pay-schemes. Giné, Karlan, and Zinman (2010) found 11% take-up of commitment saving accounts to stop smoking. Meier and Sprenger (2015) studied time invariance (stability) among low income U.S. tax filers.…”

Section: Consistency With Other Experimental Findingsmentioning

confidence: 99%

Time Consistency: Stationarity and Time Invariance

2015

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A sequence of experiments documents static and dynamic "preference reversals" between sooner-smaller and later-larger rewards, when the sooner reward could be immediate. The theoretically motivated design permits separate identification of time consistent, stationary, and time invariant choices. At least half of the subjects are time consistent, but only three-quarters of them exhibit stationary choices. About half of subjects with time inconsistent choices have stationary preferences. These results challenge the view that present-bias preferences are the main source of time inconsistent choices. provided excellent research assistance. I thank Bob Gateman for allowing me to conduct the experiment during the tutorial classes of the courses he taught. The ECON 490 students (experimental economics sections

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“…Exceptions include Ariely and Wertenbroch (2002) on homework assignments, Beshears, Choi, Laibson, and Madrian (2011) on commitment savings devices in the United States, and Houser, Schunk, Winter, and Xiao (2010) on a laboratory experiment in which subjects gain relevant experience. Gine, Karlan, and Zinman (2010) wrote that "there is little field evidence on the demand for or effectiveness of such commitment devices." For recent surveys, see Bryan, Karlan, and Nelson (2010) and DellaVigna (2009).…”

Section: Designing Accounts To Promote Savingmentioning

confidence: 99%

Poverty and Self-Control

2015

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We argue that poverty can perpetuate itself by undermining the capacity for self‐control. In line with a distinguished psychological literature, we consider modes of self‐control that involve the self‐imposed use of contingent punishments and rewards. We study settings in which consumers with quasi‐hyperbolic preferences confront an otherwise standard intertemporal allocation problem with credit constraints. Our main result demonstrates that low initial assets can limit self‐control, trapping people in poverty, while individuals with high initial assets can accumulate indefinitely. Thus, even temporary policies that initiate accumulation among the poor may be effective. We examine implications concerning the effect of access to credit on saving, the demand for commitment devices, the design of financial accounts to promote accumulation, and the variation of the marginal propensity to consume across income from different sources. We also explore the nature of optimal self‐control, demonstrating that it has a simple and behaviorally plausible structure that is immune to self‐renegotiation.

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Put Your Money Where Your Butt Is: A Commitment Contract for Smoking Cessation

Cited by 270 publications

References 42 publications

Improving utilization of and retention in PMTCT services: Can behavioral economics help?

Improving utilization of and retention in PMTCT services: Can behavioral economics help?

Time Consistency: Stationarity and Time Invariance

Poverty and Self-Control

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