Imagine this: You open your mail and it says that you are owed $1,200 from overpaid taxes! After recovering from your elation, you read on. The letter requests you to choose if you would like to be paid over the next year in increments of $100 every month or $300 every three months? How would you decide? Would you spend rather than save the money if you got it every month? Would you splurge it on luxuries or be forced to share with your family and friends if you got a bigger chunk every quarter? Would you feel happier or more stressed out about your life and finances depending on the frequency of the payments? We set out to ask a similar set of questions about some of the poorest households in northern Nigeria. Would cash transfers received quarterly or monthly change important outcomes like household consumption, savings, investment, food security, or happiness? Here is a brief take on how we went about answering questions and what we’ve found so far. — blog.wb.org/blogs