Communication and production in the family farm: Theory and evidence from rural Togo

Marie Apedo-Amah, Habiba Djebbari () and Roberta Ziparo ()
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Marie Apedo-Amah: BM = WB - La Banque Mondiale = The World Bank - WBG = GBM - World Bank Group = Groupe Banque Mondiale
Habiba Djebbari: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AMU - Aix Marseille Université
Roberta Ziparo: AMSE - Aix-Marseille Sciences Economiques - EHESS - École des hautes études en sciences sociales - AMU - Aix Marseille Université - ECM - École Centrale de Marseille - CNRS - Centre National de la Recherche Scientifique, AMU - Aix Marseille Université

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Abstract: We test for cheap talk between husbands and wives in farm households. In a labin-the-field experiment, husbands allocate inputs between their own plot and their wife's higher-return plot. We vary how returns on the wife's plot are communicated. Across all treatments, husbands underinvest in their wife's land. We model this with limited enforcement of marital agreements and derive additional predictions. Allocative inefficiencies are greater when women hold private information, especially in households with low resource sharing under full information. Communication only partly offsets inefficiencies, and only when information is verifiable ex post.

Keywords: household behavior; lab-in-the-field experiment; cheap talk; asymmetric information (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
Note: View the original document on HAL open archive server: https://amu.hal.science/hal-05545153v1
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Published in Economic Development and Cultural Change, In press

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hal:journl:hal-05545153

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