Bereket Kebede, Vegard Iversen, Cecile Jackson, Alistair Munro and Arjan Verschoor (2006) What's love got to do with it? An experimental test of household theories in East Uganda.
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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.
This is a Accepted version This version's date is: 2006 This item is not peer reviewed
https://repository.royalholloway.ac.uk/items/2f1420fa-bf4f-2d26-43c4-ff27c1247d64/1/
Deposited by Leanne Workman (UXYL007) on 11-Oct-2012 in Royal Holloway Research Online.Last modified on 11-Oct-2012
©2006 Alistair Munro. Short sections of text, not to exceed two paragraphs, may be quoted without explicit permission provided that full credit including © notice, is given to the source.