Pan-African Research Journal Africa
Published October 21, 2026 | Version v1
Journal article Open

Rural Savings-Group Payout Rotation Order and Interdisciplinary Sociology of Intra-Household Consumption Smoothing in Ugandan Villages: A Regression Discontinuity Analysis of Queuing Thresholds

Authors/Creators

  • 1. Makerere University, Kampala

Description

The central problem is that ROSCA scholarship has treated payout order as an allocation rule with distributional consequences, while household economics has treated consumption smoothing as a function of income shocks and bargaining power, leaving the queuing threshold itself unexamined as a mechanism. It formalises the threshold as a discontinuity in the timing of liquidity access, and specifies how the resulting variation in payout timing can be used to identify effects on consumption smoothing, intra-household allocation, and bargaining outcomes. The framework integrates sociological accounts of ROSCA governance with economic models of intertemporal choice and household bargaining, and it specifies the assumptions, estimands, and falsification tests required for credible inference. The contribution is a discipline-aware design that treats the queuing threshold as the unit of analysis, rather than the group or the household, and that makes explicit the conditions under which payout order can be interpreted as a causal mechanism. The paper concludes by identifying the boundary conditions under which the design is informative and the threats to inference that arise from endogenous group formation and attrition.

Notes

Published in African Rural Development Studies (Interdisciplinary -, vol 27, issue 1, pp 57-70. DOI: 10.5281/zenodo.23541729. A Pan-African Research Journals (PARJ Africa) publication, https://parj.africa

Files

article.pdf

Files (489.2 kB)

Name Size
md5:2b2fb967b93faa41cedf53045d6cddcd
144.1 kB Download
md5:812a4580f31ddbb478fe4a040e95dfa1
345.1 kB Preview Download

Additional details

Related works

Is identical to
Journal article: https://parj.africa/ajis_ruraldev/article/view/rural-savings-group-payout-rotation-order-and (URL)

References

  • Anderson, S., & Baland, J. M. (2002). The economics of ROSCAs and intrahousehold resource allocation. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 117(3), 963-995.
  • Ardener, S. (1964). The comparative study of rotating credit associations. Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 94(2), 201-229.
  • Banerjee, A. V., Besley, T., & Guinnane, T. W. (1994). Thy neighbor's keeper: The design of a credit cooperative with theory and a test. Quarterly Journal of Economics, 109(2), 491-515.
  • Bouman, F. J. A. (1995). Rotating and accumulating savings and credit associations: A development perspective. World Development, 23(3), 371-384.
  • Calonico, S., Cattaneo, M. D., & Titiunik, R. (2014). Robust nonparametric confidence intervals for regression-discontinuity designs. Econometrica, 82(6), 2295-2326.
  • Cochrane, J. H. (1991). A simple test of consumption insurance. Journal of Political Economy, 99(5), 957-976.
  • Deaton, A. (1991). Saving and liquidity constraints. Econometrica, 59(5), 1221-1248.
  • Duflo, E., & Udry, C. (2004). Intrahousehold resource allocation in Côte d'Ivoire: Social norms, separate accounts and consumption choices. NBER Working Paper No. 10498.
  • Geertz, C. (1962). The rotating credit association: A middle rung in development. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 10(3), 241-263.
  • Hahn, J., Todd, P., & van der Klaauw, W. (2001). Identification and estimation of treatment effects with a regression-discontinuity design. Econometrica, 69(1), 201-209.
  • Imbens, G. W., & Lemieux, T. (2008). Regression discontinuity designs: A guide to practice. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 615-635.
  • Kurtz, D. V. (1973). The rotating credit association: An adaptation to poverty. Human Organization, 32(1), 49-58.
  • Lee, D. S. (2008). Randomized experiments from non-random selection in U.S. House elections. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 675-697.
  • Lundberg, S., & Pollak, R. A. (1993). Separate spheres bargaining and the marriage market. Journal of Political Economy, 101(6), 988-1010.
  • Mace, B. J. (1991). Full insurance in the presence of aggregate uncertainty. Journal of Political Economy, 99(5), 928-956.
  • Manser, M., & Brown, M. (1980). Marriage and household decision-making: A bargaining analysis. International Economic Review, 21(1), 31-44.
  • McCrary, J. (2008). Manipulation of the running variable in the regression discontinuity design: A density test. Journal of Econometrics, 142(2), 698-714.
  • McElroy, M. B., & Horney, M. J. (1981). Nash-bargained household decisions: Toward a generalization of the theory of demand. International Economic Review, 22(2), 333-349.
  • Morduch, J. (1995). Income smoothing and consumption smoothing. Journal of Economic Perspectives, 9(3), 103-114.
  • Thistlethwaite, D. L., & Campbell, D. T. (1960). Regression-discontinuity analysis: An alternative to the ex post facto experiment. Journal of Educational Psychology, 51(6), 309-317.
  • Townsend, R. M. (1994). Risk and insurance in village India. Econometrica, 62(3), 539-591.
  • Udry, C. (1994). Risk and insurance in a rural credit market: An empirical investigation in northern Nigeria. Review of Economic Studies, 61(3), 495-526.
  • Van den Brink, R., & Chavas, J. P. (1997). The microeconomics of an indigenous African institution: The rotating savings and credit association. Economic Development and Cultural Change, 45(4), 745-772.