What’s love got to do with it ? An experimental test of household models in East Uganda

Alistair Munro, Bereket Kebede, Vegard Iversen (), Cecile Jackson () and Arjan Verschoor ()
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Vegard Iversen: School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, http://www.uea.ac.uk/dev/
Cecile Jackson: School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, http://www.uea.ac.uk/dev/
Arjan Verschoor: School of Development Studies, University of East Anglia, Norwich, UK, http://www.uea.ac.uk/dev/

No 06/01, Royal Holloway, University of London: Discussion Papers in Economics from Department of Economics, Royal Holloway University of London

Abstract: 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.

Keywords: experiment; household theories; Uganda; unitary model; cooperative model (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C92 C93 D13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 47 pages
Date: 2006-02, Revised 2006-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-afr, nep-dev and nep-exp
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Working Paper: What’s love got to do with it ? An experimental test of household models in East Uganda (2006)
Working Paper: What's love got to do with it? An experimental test of household models in east uganda (2006)
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