Gender, Information and the Efficiency of Household Production Decisions: An Experiment in Rural Togo

Marie Christine Apedo-Amah (), Habiba Djebbari and Roberta Ziparo
Additional contact information
Marie Christine Apedo-Amah: Stanford University

No 12948, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Why do farm households inefficiently allocate resources across the plots they cultivate? We explore how these production inefficiencies relate to consumption decisions and information sharing within the household. In a lab-in-the-field experiment, male producers allocate too few inputs to their wife's plot, failing to maximize household aggregate profits. They do transfer more inputs when the returns from that plot are higher. Experimental manipulation of information on these returns triggers heterogenous responses across households. We provide a theoretical framework that rationalizes these findings and further leads to sharp predictions. Joint contribution to a household public good compels spouses to make efficient production decisions. Only households who are in a separate-sphere regime experience inefficiency in farm production and are unable to effectively communicate on returns to avoid extra losses. Consistent with this framework, when we experimentally offer an ex post information verification mechanism, additional losses due to information asymmetries are prevented.

Keywords: farm households; household production and intra-household allocation; non-cooperative game theory; asymmetric and private information; lab-in-the-field experiment (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 C93 D13 D82 Q12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 49 pages
Date: 2020-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cdm and nep-exp
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp12948.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Gender, information and the efficiency of household production decisions: An experiment in rural Togo (2019)
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:iza:izadps:dp12948

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().