Who shares risk with whom under different enforcement mechanisms?

Abstract

The authors investigate whether available enforcement mechanisms affects who shares risk with whom in sub-Saharan Africa by applying dyadic regression analysis to data from a lab-type experiment, surveys and a genealogical mapping exercise. During the experiment participants were invited to form risk sharing groups under three enforcement mechanisms: external, intrinsic, and extrinsic, i.e., social sanctioning. Dyads similar in age and gender or who belong to the same economic community based organizations (CBOs) are more likely to share risk. However, when social sanctioning is possible, co-members in economic CBOs withdraw from group formation and co-religion and marriage ties come to the fore. An earlier version of this paper was published as CSAE working paper 2008-14