Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses

Fredrik Carlsson, Haoran He, Peter Martinsson, Ping Qin () and Matthias Sutter

Working Papers from Faculty of Economics and Statistics, Universität Innsbruck

Abstract: Many economic decisions are made jointly within households. This raises the question about spouses' relative influence on joint decisions and the determinants of relative influence. Using a controlled experiment (on inter-temporal choice), we let each spouse first make individual decisions and then make joint decisions with the other spouse. We use a random parameter probit model to measure the relative influence of spouses on joint decisions. In general, husbands have a stronger influence than wives. However, in richer households and when the wife is older than the husband, we find a significantly stronger influence of the wife on joint decisions.

Keywords: household decision making; spouses; relative influence; random parameter model; field experiment; time preferences (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C92 C93 D10 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35
Date: 2010-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-tra
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https://www2.uibk.ac.at/downloads/c4041030/wpaper/2010-20.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Journal Article: Household decision making in rural China: Using experiments to estimate the influences of spouses (2012)
Working Paper: Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses (2010)
Working Paper: Household Decision Making in Rural China: Using Experiments to Estimate the Influences of Spouses (2010)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inn:wpaper:2010-20

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