Are Wives less Selfish than their Husbands? Evidence from Hawk-Dove Game Field Experiments

Stein Holden () and Sosina Bezu ()

No 3/14, CLTS Working Papers from Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies

Abstract: Lab-in-the-field Hawk-Dove game experiments were played by spouses in a rural sample of households in Southern Ethiopia where women/wives traditionally have a weak position. Randomized treatments included a 3x3 design with simultaneous, one-way signaling and sequential games as the first dimension and Pareto-efficient, Pareto-inferior and Pareto-superior (Dove;Dove) payout treatments as the second dimension, with a sequence of six game rounds per household. The experiments allow for the assessment of the presence of alternative player types, such as players that prioritize household income maximization, players that prioritize personal income, players that are Hawkish and punish their spouse at their own expense, and cooperative reciprocators (Doves) who cooperate even at the expense of household and personal income. The experiments revealed that all player types were present in the sample. Husbands played significantly less Hawkish than their wives and played gradually less Hawkish over the six game rounds, whereas wives remained Hawkish.

Keywords: Intra-household cooperation; Hawk-Dove game; Pareto-efficiency; simultaneous games; one-way signaling games; sequential games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 C72 C93 H31 J16 Q15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2014-02-25, Revised 2019-10-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nmbu.no/download/file/fid/40196 Full text (application/pdf)

Related works:
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:hhs:nlsclt:2014_003

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CLTS Working Papers from Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Centre for Land Tenure Studies Centre for Land Tenure Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, P.O. Box 5003, NO-1432 Aas, Norway. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sarah Ephrida Tione ().