Working Paper: NBER ID: w24977
Authors: Uzma Afzal; Giovanna Dadda; Marcel Fafchamps; Farah Said
Abstract: We conduct two lab experiments and one field experiment to investigate demand for consumption agency in married couples. The evidence we uncover is consistent across all three experiments. Subjects are often no better at guessing their spouse's preferences than those of a stranger, and many subjects disregard what they believe or know about others' preferences when assigning them a consumption bundle. This confers instrumental value to individual executive agency within the household. We indeed find significant evidence of demand for agency in all three experiments, and this demand varies with the cost and anticipated instrumental benefit of agency. But subjects often make choices incompatible with pure instrumental motives – e.g., paying for agency even when they know their partner assigned them their preferred choice. We also find female subjects to be quite willing to exert agency even though, based on survey responses, they have little executive agency within their household. We interpret this as suggestive of pent-up demand for agency, and indeed we find that female demand for agency falls as a result of an empowerment intervention.
Keywords: No keywords provided
JEL Codes: D13; D91; O12
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| knowledge of preferences (D80) | respect for those preferences in consumption choices (D11) |
| awareness of partner's preferences (D10) | ignoring partner's preferences (D10) |
| demand for agency (J23) | control over consumption decisions (D10) |
| female subjects' willingness to assert agency (J16) | low executive agency within households (D13) |
| willingness to pay for agency (D23) | awareness of partner's choice aligning with preferences (D01) |