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ECONOMIC GROWTH CENTER
YALE UNIVERSITY
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CENTER DISCUSSION PAPER NO. 949
Female Empowerment: Impact of a Commitment Savings
Product in the Philippines
Nava Ashraf
Harvard Business School
Dean Karlan
Yale University
Wesley Yin
University of Chicago
December 2006
Notes: Center Discussion Papers are preliminary materials circulated to stimulate discussions
and critical comments.
This paper was formerly titled “Tying Husbands to the Mast: Impact of a Commitment
Savings Product in the Philippines.” We thank the Green Bank of Caraga for cooperation
throughout this experiment, John Owens and the USAID/Philippines Microenterprise
Access to Banking Services Program team for helping to get the project started, Chona
Echavez for collaborating on the field work, Robin Burgess, Larry Katz, Sendhil
Mullainathan and Chris Udry for comments, and Nathalie Gons, Tomoko Harigaya,
Karen Lyons and Lauren Smith for excellent research and field assistance. We thank the
National Science Foundation (SGER SES-0313877, CAREER SES-0547898),
Innovations for Poverty Action, Russell Sage Foundation and the Social Science
Research Council for funding. All views, opinion and errors are our own.
This paper can be downloaded without charge from the Social Science Research Network
electronic library at: http://ssrn.com/abstract=952784
An index to papers in the Economic Growth Center Discussion Paper Series is located at:
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