My Research

Gender Roles and Asymmetric Information: Non-cooperative Behavior on Intra-Household Allocation (with Thomas Walker) 

Featured in the Gender Action Portal at the Harvard Kennedy School. [Link]

We present a model of intra-household bargaining under asymmetric information in rural Ghana, a context in which men and women hold separate economies and husbands make regular transfers to their wives to pay for household expenses. The model predicts that spouses have an incentive to hide unobservable windfalls from each other when the windfall is small relative to the transfer, and that this incentive may differ by gender. We test these hypotheses using data from a field experiment in Ghana, in which husbands and wives in four small communities both had an independent chance to win lottery prizes of cash and livestock. Half of the prizes were awarded publicly, the other half privately. In line with the model’s predictions, the effect of prize-winning on expenditure varies significantly depending on the publicity of the prize and the gender of the winning spouse. We also find evidence that the information asymmetry has an effect on intertemporal allocations of the prize-winnings. Our findings imply that in a marital setting, the publicity of windfalls may matter as much or more than the gender of the recipient, and that provision of formal savings mechanisms may strengthen wives’ ability to control unanticipated income.

Gender Differences in Intra-Household Efficiency: Evidence from an Investment Game between Spouses in India  

In this paper, I test for gender differences in intra-household allocative efficiency through a laboratory experiment with established married couples in India. The experiment presents the couple with the opportunity to earn 50% of daily household expenditure. Spouses played an extended version of an investment game where one spouse was randomly assigned to the role of sender and the other to receiver. The setting of the game is unique in several ways. There is perfect information over strategies, actions, and final payoffs. Second mover spouses can react to the first movers’ actions, which is rare in intra-household experiments. The actions of both senders and receivers have efficiency consequences on experimental earnings. The unitary and cooperative models of the household are rejected as only 5% of men and 2% of women in the sender role play the household earnings maximizing strategy. Women send and return significantly less money than their male counterparts. Women (senders) who keep more money are those in households where husbands’ tobacco consumption is largest costing households the equivalent of 30% of daily household expenditure. The results indicate that households operate under non-cooperative bargaining contracts where women are willing to incur costs to maintain control over money.

Intra-Household Allocation, Beliefs, and Communication between Spouses in Kenya (with Yuta Masuda and Wei Zhang) [submitted]

Spousal experiments continue to report non-cooperative behavior, raising questions about potential interventions to increase intra-household efficiency. We examine the effect of facilitating communication between spouses. We conducted a field-laboratory experiment in Kenya where individuals in established marriages were asked to play several rounds of a trust game. In half of the rounds, spouses were allowed to communicate. We find evidence to reject both the unitary and cooperative models of the household as senders transfer on average 62% of their endowments resulting in an average loss of earnings of Ksh 175, even when spouses are allowed to discuss allocations. Communication improve efficiency by 4 percentage points. We elicit beliefs about what spouses expect their partners to choose and find that individuals in couples with concordant beliefs make less efficient choices. We explore how the experimental results relate to conflicting responses between spouses over intra-household transfers, marital satisfaction, and trust.

Effect of Political Role Models on Marriage and Fertility in India (with Gina Joseph)

The Effect of the Violence Attention and Prevention Units on Intimate Partner Violence in the Dominican Republic (with Santa Ramirez)

Permanent Working Papers:

Heteroskedasticity in Fixed-Effects One-way Error Components Models: Evaluating the Performance of Standard Tests 

This paper evaluates the performance of the Breusch-Pagan LM test and the White test for heteroskedasticity in fixed-effects one-way error components models. I contrast the results of these tests for the fixed-effects and the first differences model, which differ on the severity of serial correlation. Monte Carlo results indicate both tests perform equally well in large samples, but they are very sensitive to overall sample size, as changes in T or N do not affect the performance if overall sample size is held constant.

Show me the Money: Intra-Household Allocation under Incomplete Information 

There is evidence that individuals will sometimes withhold income transfers, such as bonuses, gifts, and cash transfers, from other members of the household (Ashraf (2009); Vogley and Pahl (1994)). In this paper, I show that the incentives to hide income under incomplete information over the quantity of resources available to the household differ for three different household resource management structures. I illustrate this with a simple two-stage game. In the first stage, one spouse receives a monetary transfer that is unobserved by her spouse, and she must decide whether to reveal or to hide it. In the second stage, spouses bargain over the allocation of resources between a household good and private expenditure. The three models differ in the resource allocation mechanism that takes place in second stage of the game: housekeeping allowance, independent management, and joint management. Results indicate that hiding is more likely to occur in households with a housekeeping allowance contract, compared to independent or joint management. However if the spouse with the information advantage has low bargaining power, hiding is even more likely to occur relative to non-cooperative contracts. [Previously circulated as: "Intra-Household Resource Management Structure and Income-Hiding under Incomplete Information"]. 

Ties that Bind: The Kin System as a Mechanism for Income-Hiding in Rural Ghana 

UNU-WIDER Working Paper WP/2013/007

I present a simple model of intra-household allocation between spouses to show that when the quantity of resources available to the household is not perfectly observed by both spouses, hiding of income can occur even when revelation of the additional resources increases bargaining power. From the model, a test to identify income hiding empirically is derived. A household survey conducted in 4 districts in Southern Ghana is used to determine whether the information asymmetries that exist between spouses over farm income result in hiding. The data contains information on cross-reporting of each spouse’s farm income. I exploit the variation in the differences in reporting of the husband’s own farm income and his wife’s report as an indicator of information asymmetries over farm income, to test whether the allocation of resources in Ghanaian households is consistent with income-hiding. In order to identify the effect of asymmetric information over farm income the wife’s clan and the husband’s bride-wealth payments upon marriage are used as instruments for asymmetric information. My findings indicate that men hide farm sales income in the form of gifts to family members other than children and their spouse, which are not closely monitored. In doing so, men give up bargaining power as there is a reduction in observable expenditures such as public transportation. The wife’s response is also consistent with hiding. As information asymmetries increase, she reduces her expenditure in non-essential items, such as prepared foods and oil, but increases personal spending as a result of the gain in bargaining power. [Previously circulated as: "What's Yours is Ours, and What's Mine is Mine? Identifying Income-Hiding between Spouses in Rural Ghana"]. 

Work in Progress:

Intergenerational Transmission of Intimate Partner Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Lindsay Novak)

Temperature, Income Shocks, and Intimate Partner Violence in Sub-Saharan Africa (with Tarana Chaudhan)

Tipples and Quarrels:  Effect of an Alcohol Consumption Reduction Program on Intimate Partner Violence in Kenya (with David Murphy)

Contrasting Preferences for Trust and Reciprocity between Spouses in India, Kenya, and Ethiopia  (with Marc Bellemare, Chris Paul, Yuta Masuda, and Wei Zhang)

Team Work and Cooperative Behavior (with Takao Kato)

Time Allocation and Decision-Making Power in the Household (with Wei Zhang and Yuta Masuda)