The European Journal of Development Research, 2019
Given the importance of the household as a resource allocation mechanism, considerable interest e... more Given the importance of the household as a resource allocation mechanism, considerable interest exists in its efficiency. Most of the non-experimental evidence for inefficiency comes from West African farm households in which husbands and wives pursue separate productive activities. Using experiments, we test for efficiency of spouses' resource allocation decisions in a range of household types. In North India, we selected households that are unified, in northern Nigeria households characterised by separate spheres of economic decision making. Our other sites occupy carefully selected intermediate positions on the spectrum from unitary to separate-spheres household types. We find that, the more separate is decision making in real life, the less efficient is resource allocation in the experiments. Moreover, female control of resource allocation tends to lower efficiency, in contrast to male control. The exception is a site in northern Nigeria where female control of resource allocation is well established.
We run an experiment in Ethiopia where farmers can use their own money to decrease the money of o... more We run an experiment in Ethiopia where farmers can use their own money to decrease the money of others (money burning). The data support the prediction from an inequality aversion model based on absolute income differences; but there is no support for an inequality aversion model based on comparison with mean payoff of others. Experimentally measured money burning on the village level is negatively correlated to real-life agricultural innovations. This result is robust even when data from another independent survey than the current research are used. This underscores the importance of social preferences in agricultural innovations in developing countries.
We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data... more We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). While the absence of altruism is rejected, we find evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using quantitative and qualitative survey data. Assortative matching and correlates of bargaining power influence behaviour within the experiments. Our findings suggest that a 'one-size fits all' model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory.
Intra-household efficiency is tested by using experimental data from variants of a public good ga... more Intra-household efficiency is tested by using experimental data from variants of a public good game from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses frequently do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge of allocating the common pool. Women contribute less than men. These results cast doubts on many models of household decision making including unitary and collective models and on Sen's (1990) conjecture of greater female identification with household interests. We also find strong evidence for opportunism, where spouses don't contribute to the common pool even when they are in control of its allocation. Experimental results are correlated with some socio-economic conditions in a manner suggesting that assortative matching improves household efficiency. The development of non-cooperative intra-household models that allow in their empirical implementation for sensitivity to the context-specificity of gender relations seems to be a promising direction for future research.
Envy and Agricultural Innovation in Africa: An Experimental Case Study from Ethiopia
SSRN Electronic Journal, 2010
Abstract This paper examines the impact of envy or related social preferences on agricultural inn... more Abstract This paper examines the impact of envy or related social preferences on agricultural innovation in Ethiopia by combining experimental and household survey data. In the first stage of a money burning game, income inequality is induced by providing differential ...
posit that women in South India enjoy relatively more agency than in the North. Their conclusions... more posit that women in South India enjoy relatively more agency than in the North. Their conclusions have become part of the standard picture of Indian rural society. In this paper, we examine using experimental data the implications of this regional contrast in female autonomy for the efficiency of family decision-making. We take a sample of 1200 couples from two areas in the north of India (Uttar Pradesh) and one area in the south (Tamil Nadu) that are often taken to exemplify differences in the autonomy of women and the nature of marital relationships. Generally, we find large-scale and robust evidence of inefficiency and the hiding of assets when this is possible. Men invest more and are more generous to their partners. Women are more willing to invest in a common pool when their income is earned through working and when assets are publicly observable. Regarding the focus of our paper, we find continuing significant differences between North and South and we find relatively little evidence that urban living is associated with changes in the nature of marital behaviour. There are some differences between response to treatment but the key and striking difference between the North and the South is that in both rural and urban sites in the former region household efficiency is considerably greater than in the latter, which does on the face of it suggest a tradeoff between autonomy and efficiency.
Although polygamy is common in many parts of the world, most economic analysis of the household f... more Although polygamy is common in many parts of the world, most economic analysis of the household focuses on monogamy. We use simple public good games to investigate experimentally theories of household behavior. A unique aspect of our research is that half our sample are polygynous households recruited systematically from villages in rural areas south of Kano, Northern Nigeria, one of the modern heartlands of polygyny. Spouses play two variants of a voluntary contributions game in which endowments are private knowledge, but contributions are public. In one variant, the common pool is split equally. In the other treatment the husband allocates the pool (and wives are forewarned of this). Most partners keep back at least half of their endowment from the common pool, but we find no evidence that polygynous households are less efficient than their monogamous counterparts. We reject a strong form of Bergstrom's model of polygyny in which all wives receive an equal allocation. Senior wives often receive more from their husbands, no matter what their contribution. Thus their return to contributions is higher compared to their junior counterparts. However, the clearest result is that when they control the allocation, polygynous men receive a higher payoff compared to both their wives and their monogamous counterparts.
An experimental design using treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism is used to test hou... more An experimental design using treatments of a voluntary contribution mechanism is used to test household efficiency. Efficiency is decisively rejected in all treatments contrary to the assumption of most household models. Information on initial endowments of spouses improves efficiency only in some treatments suggesting that the impact of information is context dependent. Actual and expected contribution rates of spouses are systematically different; husbands' (wives') expectations of their wives' (husbands') contributions are higher (lower) than actual contributions. These errors imply that equilibrium in a game theoretic framework is unlikely. Statistical tests indicate other considerations than efficiency are likely important.
We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data... more We test core theories of the household using variants of a public good game and experimental data from 240 couples in rural Uganda. Spouses do not maximise surplus from cooperation and realise a greater surplus when women are in charge. This violates assumptions of unitary and cooperative models. When women control the common account, they receive less than when men control it; this contradicts standard bargaining models. Women contribute less than men and are rewarded more generously by men than vice versa. This casts doubt on postulates in Sen (1990). We also find strong evidence for opportunism. The results are put in a socioeconomic context using survey data and follow-up interviews, which provides hints of the external validity of our findings; more so for contribution than for allocation behaviour. Taken together, our findings suggest that a 'one-size fits all' model of the household is unlikely to be satisfactory.
The paper reports the result of an experimental game on asset integration and risk taking. We fin... more The paper reports the result of an experimental game on asset integration and risk taking. We find evidence that winnings in earlier rounds affect risk taking in subsequent rounds, but no evidence that real life wealth outside the experiment affects risk taking. We and some evidence of imitation of the risk taking behavior of others that is distinct from learning. Controlling for past winnings, participants who receive a low endowment in a round engage in more risk taking. We also test a keeping-up-with-the-Joneses hypothesis and find some evidence that subjects seek to keep up with winners. Taken together, the evidence is consistent with risk taking tracking a reference point that is affected by social comparisons.
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Papers by Bereket Kebede