IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/16433.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Making Savers Winners: An Overview of Prize-Linked Savings Products

Author

Listed:
  • Melissa Schettini Kearney
  • Peter Tufano
  • Jonathan Guryan
  • Erik Hurst

Abstract

For over three centuries and throughout the globe, people have enthusiastically bought savings products that incorporate lottery elements. In lieu of paying traditional interest to all investors proportional to their balances, these Prize Linked Savings (PLS) accounts distribute periodic sizeable payments to some investors using a lottery-like drawing where an investor's chances of winning are proportional to one's account balances. This paper describes these products, provides examples of their use, argues for their potential popularity in the United States --especially to low and moderate income non-savers--and discusses the laws and regulations in the United States that largely prohibit their issuance.

Suggested Citation

  • Melissa Schettini Kearney & Peter Tufano & Jonathan Guryan & Erik Hurst, 2010. "Making Savers Winners: An Overview of Prize-Linked Savings Products," NBER Working Papers 16433, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16433
    Note: LE PE
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w16433.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kearney, Melissa Schettini, 2005. "State lotteries and consumer behavior," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(11-12), pages 2269-2299, December.
    2. Mauro Guillén & Adrian Tschoegl, 2002. "Banking on Gambling: Banks and Lottery-Linked Deposit Accounts," Journal of Financial Services Research, Springer;Western Finance Association, vol. 21(3), pages 219-231, June.
    3. Morduch, Jonathan, 1999. "Between the State and the Market: Can Informal Insurance Patch the Safety Net?," The World Bank Research Observer, World Bank, vol. 14(2), pages 187-207, August.
    4. Cletus C. Coughlin & Thomas A. Garrett & Ruben Hernandez-Murillo, 2006. "The geography, economics, and politics of lottery adoption," Review, Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, vol. 88(May), pages 165-180.
    5. Murphy, Anne L., 2005. "Lotteries in the 1690s: Investment or Gamble?," Financial History Review, Cambridge University Press, vol. 12(02), pages 227-246, October.
    6. Peter Tufano & Nick Maynard & Jan-Emmanuel De Neve, 2008. "Consumer Demand for Prize-Linked Savings: A Preliminary Analysis," Harvard Business School Working Papers 08-061, Harvard Business School.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Annamaria Lusardi & Daniel Schneider & Peter Tufano, 2011. "Financially Fragile Households: Evidence and Implications," Brookings Papers on Economic Activity, Economic Studies Program, The Brookings Institution, vol. 42(1 (Spring), pages 83-150.
    2. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    3. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2012. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," NBER Working Papers 18621, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Joaquín Gómez Miñambres & Mark Schneider, 2019. "Carrots and Sticks: Optimal Contracting with Skewness Preference and Ambiguity Aversion," Working Papers 19-02, Chapman University, Economic Science Institute.
    5. Brigitte C. Madrian, 2014. "Applying Insights from Behavioral Economics to Policy Design," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 6(1), pages 663-688, August.
    6. Felipe S. Iachan & Plamen T. Nenov & Alp Simsek, 2021. "The Choice Channel of Financial Innovation," American Economic Journal: Macroeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 13(2), pages 333-372, April.
    7. Shawn Cole & Benjamin Iverson & Peter Tufano, 2022. "Can Gambling Increase Savings? Empirical Evidence on Prize-Linked Savings Accounts," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 68(5), pages 3282-3308, May.
    8. Marco Fabbri & Paolo Nicola Barbieri & Maria Bigoni, 2019. "Ride Your Luck! A Field Experiment on Lottery-Based Incentives for Compliance," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 65(9), pages 4336-4348, September.
    9. Crossley, Thomas F. & Low, Hamish & Smith, Sarah, 2016. "Do consumers gamble to convexify?," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 131(PA), pages 276-291.
    10. Vernon Loke & Laura Choi & Margaret Libby, 2015. "Increasing Youth Financial Capability: An Evaluation of the MyPath Savings Initiative," Journal of Consumer Affairs, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 49(1), pages 97-126, March.
    11. Annamaria Lusardi & Olivia S. Mitchell, 2011. "The Outlook for Financial Literacy," NBER Working Papers 17077, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    12. Robert Ostling & Erik Lindqvist & David Cesarini & Joseph Briggs, 2015. "Wealth and Stock Market Participation: Estimating the Causal Effect From Swedish Lotteries," 2015 Meeting Papers 806, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    13. Nicholas C. Barberis, 2013. "Thirty Years of Prospect Theory in Economics: A Review and Assessment," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 27(1), pages 173-196, Winter.
    14. Tufano, Peter & De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel & Maynard, Nick, 2011. "U.S. consumer demand for prize-linked savings: New evidence on a new product," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 116-118, May.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Garrett, Thomas A. & Coughlin, Cletus C., 2009. "Inter–Temporal Differences in the Income Elasticity of Demand for Lottery Tickets," National Tax Journal, National Tax Association;National Tax Journal, vol. 62(1), pages 77-99, March.
    2. Humphreys, Brad & Perez, Levi, 2011. "Lottery Participants and Revenues: An International Survey of Economic Research on Lotteries," Working Papers 2011-17, University of Alberta, Department of Economics.
    3. Tufano, Peter & De Neve, Jan-Emmanuel & Maynard, Nick, 2011. "U.S. consumer demand for prize-linked savings: New evidence on a new product," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 111(2), pages 116-118, May.
    4. Daniel Jones, 2013. "Education’s gambling problem: The impact of earmarking lottery revenues for education on charitable giving and government spending," The Centre for Market and Public Organisation 13/307, The Centre for Market and Public Organisation, University of Bristol, UK.
    5. Kent Grote & Victor Matheson, 2011. "The Economics of Lotteries: An Annotated Bibliography," Working Papers 1110, College of the Holy Cross, Department of Economics.
    6. Filiz-Ozbay, Emel & Guryan, Jonathan & Hyndman, Kyle & Kearney, Melissa & Ozbay, Erkut Y., 2015. "Do lottery payments induce savings behavior? Evidence from the lab," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 1-24.
    7. Nikolov, Plamen & Adelman, Alan, 2019. "Do private household transfers to the elderly respond to public pension benefits? Evidence from rural China," The Journal of the Economics of Ageing, Elsevier, vol. 14(C).
    8. Isaac B. Oluwatayo, 2004. "Income Risk and Welfare Status of Rural Households in Nigeria: Ekiti State as a Test Case," WIDER Working Paper Series RP2004-61, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    9. Jin, Ling & Chen, Kevin Z. & Yu, Bingxin & Filipski, Mateusz, 2015. "Farmers' Coping Strategies against an Aggregate Shock: Evidence from the 2008 Sichuan Earthquake," 2015 Conference, August 9-14, 2015, Milan, Italy 211814, International Association of Agricultural Economists.
    10. Pierre Dubois & Bruno Jullien & Thierry Magnac, 2008. "Formal and Informal Risk Sharing in LDCs: Theory and Empirical Evidence," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 76(4), pages 679-725, July.
    11. Schreiner, Mark & Woller, Gary, 2003. "Microenterprise Development Programs in the United States and in the Developing World," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 31(9), pages 1567-1580, September.
    12. Kathleen J. Brown & Roos Haer & Gudrun Østby, 2023. "Local Food Price Volatility and School Dropout in Sub‐Saharan Africa," Population and Development Review, The Population Council, Inc., vol. 49(3), pages 443-468, September.
    13. Arun, Thankom Gopinath & Bendig, Mirko, 2010. "Risk Management among the Poor: The Case of Microfinancial Services," IZA Discussion Papers 5174, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    14. Kananurak, Papar & Sirisankanan, Aeggarchat, 2016. "Do Public Transfers Crowd-out Private Transfers? Evidence from the Thai Socio-Economic Panel Survey," Asian Journal of Applied Economics, Kasetsart University, Center for Applied Economics Research, vol. 23(2), December.
    15. Vial, Virginie & Hanoteau, Julien, 2015. "Returns to Micro-Entrepreneurship in an Emerging Economy: A Quantile Study of Entrepreneurial Indonesian Households’ Welfare," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 142-157.
    16. Rebecca L. Thornton & Laurel E. Hatt & Erica M. Field & Mursaleena Islam & Freddy Solís Diaz & Martha Azucena González, 2010. "Social security health insurance for the informal sector in Nicaragua: a randomized evaluation," Health Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 19(S1), pages 181-206, September.
    17. Mukherjee, Arghya Kusum & Kundu, Amit, 2012. "Swarnajayanti Gram Swarojgar Yojona as a Safety Net: Evidence from Murshidabad District of West Bengal," Bangladesh Development Studies, Bangladesh Institute of Development Studies (BIDS), vol. 35(1), pages 79-103, March.
    18. World Bank, 2001. "Risk Management in South Asia : A Poverty Focused Approach," World Bank Publications - Reports 15449, The World Bank Group.
    19. Monica Ospina, 2010. "CCT programs for consumption insurance: evidence from Colombia," Documentos de Trabajo de Valor Público 10612, Universidad EAFIT.
    20. Arias, Omar & Blom, Andreas & Bosch, Mariano & Cunningham, Wendy & Fiszbein, Ariel & Lopez Acevedo, Gladys & Maloney, William & Saavedra, Jaime & Sanchez-Paramo, Carolina & Santamaria, Mauricio & Siga, 2005. "Pending issues in protection, productivity growth, and poverty reduction," Policy Research Working Paper Series 3799, The World Bank.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • G21 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Banks; Other Depository Institutions; Micro Finance Institutions; Mortgages
    • G28 - Financial Economics - - Financial Institutions and Services - - - Government Policy and Regulation
    • H30 - Public Economics - - Fiscal Policies and Behavior of Economic Agents - - - General
    • K3 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:16433. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.