My dissertation consists of three essays in Development Economics. The first essay tests the causal effect of financial inclusion on patience. Theory suggests that intertemporal choices are guided by interest rates when individuals freely access banking services and reflect underlying time preference when individuals are credit-constrained. This may lead to a reduction in the patience when the financial system expands, especially when saving opportunity increases. Analyzing two waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey that spans a period of rapid bank expansion in rural villages, I find that a commercial bank branch in the village reduces measured patience. I also find that financial access affects patience mainly by increasing access to dep...[ Read more ]

My dissertation consists of three essays in Development Economics. The first essay tests the causal effect of financial inclusion on patience. Theory suggests that intertemporal choices are guided by interest rates when individuals freely access banking services and reflect underlying time preference when individuals are credit-constrained. This may lead to a reduction in the patience when the financial system expands, especially when saving opportunity increases. Analyzing two waves of the Indonesian Family Life Survey that spans a period of rapid bank expansion in rural villages, I find that a commercial bank branch in the village reduces measured patience. I also find that financial access affects patience mainly by increasing access to deposit services rather than loans.

The second essay examines the treatment effect of a randomized parenting intervention on children's patience The psychological literature suggests that authoritative parents are more likely to cultivate patient children. Using China's Early Childhood Intervention Program, I find that participation in the randomized parenting program significantly increases pre-school children's patience measured three years after treatment. The intervention also has a significant and lasting impact on parenting style but no effect on other factors, which suggests that it is the main mechanism for the intervention's effect.

The third essay investigates the causal impact of delayed enrolment on high school enrolment in a developing country setting. Using China's 1986 Compulsory Education Law, which established a nationally uniform age threshold for primary school enrolment as a natural experiment, we find that the probability of attending high school falls by 4.7 percentage points when school enrolment is postponed by one year. We provide further evidence that those who start school later are not better learners, and that older students' higher labor opportunity cost plays an important role in explaining the negative impact of school entry age on educational attainment.