Welcome to a higher seminar arranged by the Department of Economics, at the School of Social Sciences, Södertörns University where Anna Tompsett will present a papper "Time is not money: an experiment with community contribution requirements in cash and labour".

Community-driven development projects often require communities to contribute collectively towards project costs. We provide the first experimental evaluation of a community contribution requirement for a development intervention, as well as the first experimental comparison between cash and labour contribution requirements of similar nominal value. Imposing a cash contribution requirement greatly decreases program take-up, relative to a contribution waiver, but imposing a labour contribution does not. Program impact is correspondingly lower under the cash contribution requirement than under the labour contribution requirement or the contribution waiver. Higher take-up under the labour contribution requirement appears to be the consequence of the low real value that communities place on their time. Our results suggest that there may be substantial welfare gains to be made by allowing households in poor rural communities to contribute in labour rather than cash.

The seminar will take place via Zoom, please contact Mats Bergman (details below) for link.