Only Mine or All Ours: An Artefactual Field Experiment on Procedural Altruism

Utteeyo Dasgupta and Subha Mani

Fordham Economics Discussion Paper Series from Fordham University, Department of Economics

Abstract: In an artefactual field experiment, we introduce a novel allocation game to investigate the role of procedural altruism in household decision-making and study choices of married spouses. Subjects can distribute their earnings from the experiment either on food items (joint consumption good), or on gender specific personal clothing (private consumption good). Subjects' consumption choices are observed under two treatments – earnings with effort, and earnings without effort. At the aggregate we find that subjects exhibit a strong preference for own private consumption good when assigned to the effort treatment. However, further scrutiny suggests that women's choice for the joint consumption good in the household remains largely independent of the treatment. In contrast, men exhibit a strong preference for private consumption good in the effort treatment.

Keywords: Procedural utility; Household decision making; Gender; Experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 D1 Z1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-dem, nep-exp, nep-hrm and nep-upt
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:frd:wpaper:dp2013-01

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