Intra-household Efficiency: An Experimental Study from Ethiopia

Bereket Kebede, Marcela Tarazona, Alistair Munro and Arjan Verschoor

Journal of African Economies, 2014, vol. 23, issue 1, 105-150

Abstract: A common feature of many intra-household models is the assumption of efficiency. This paper uses an experimental design to directly test this. Data from 1,200 married couples in Ethiopia were collected using treatments that vary initial endowments of spouses, final allocation rules and information in a voluntary contribution mechanism (VCM). Efficiency is decisively rejected in all treatments. Information improves efficiency only in some treatments, suggesting that the role of information is context dependent. Husbands' expectations of their wives' contributions are higher than their wives' actual contributions, and wives' expectations of their husbands' contributions are lower than their husbands' actual contributions. These systematic errors in expected and actual behaviour imply that the attainment of equilibrium as in a game theoretic framework is unlikely. Statistical tests indicate that instead of efficiency, other considerations are likely important. Overall, most of the empirical results cast doubt on models of the household that assume Pareto efficiency.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/jae/ejt019 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Intra-household efficiency; An experimental study from Ethiopia (2011)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:jafrec:v:23:y:2014:i:1:p:105-150.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of African Economies is currently edited by Francis Teal

More articles in Journal of African Economies from Centre for the Study of African Economies Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press ().