Gender Differences in Preferences, Intra-Household Externalities, and Low Demand for Improved Cookstoves

Grant Miller and Ahmed Mobarak

No 18964, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper examines whether an intra-household externality prevents adoption of a technology with substantial implications for population health and the environment: improved cookstoves. Motivated by a model of intra-household decision-making, the experiment markets stoves to husbands or wives in turn at randomly varying prices. We find that women - who bear disproportionate cooking costs - have stronger preference for healthier stoves, but lack the authority to make purchases. Our findings suggest that if women cannot make independent choices about household resource use, public policy may not be able to exploit gender differences in preferences to promote technology adoption absent broader social change.

JEL-codes: D13 I12 I15 O12 O33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
Note: CH DEV EEE EH
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (59)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18964.pdf (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:nbr:nberwo:18964

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w18964

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().