Working Paper: NBER ID: w28844
Authors: John J. Conlon; Malavika Mani; Gautam Rao; Matthew W. Ridley; Frank Schilbach
Abstract: We study social learning between spouses using an experiment in Chennai, India. We vary whether individuals discover information themselves or must instead learn what their spouse discovered via a discussion. Women treat their 'own' and their husband's information the same. In sharp contrast, men's beliefs respond less than half as much to information that was discovered by their wife. This is not due to a lack of communication: husbands put less weight on their wife's signals even when perfectly informed of them. In a second experiment, when paired with mixed- and same-gender strangers, both men and women heavily discount their teammate's information relative to their own. We conclude that people have a tendency to underweight others' information relative to their own. The marital context creates a countervailing force for women, resulting in a gender difference in learning (only) in the household.
Keywords: social learning; gender differences; household decision-making; information sharing
JEL Codes: D1; D8; D9; O1
Edges that are evidenced by causal inference methods are in orange, and the rest are in light blue.
| Cause | Effect |
|---|---|
| Husbands discount their wives' information (D80) | Wives' information is discounted by husbands by 58% (p=0.001) (J12) |
| Wives discount their husbands' information (D80) | Husbands' information is discounted by wives by 7% (p=0.61) (J12) |
| Husbands discount their wives' information (D80) | Husbands discount their wives' information by 98% (p=0.001) when communicated directly (D80) |
| Wives treat their husbands' information (D13) | Wives treat husbands' information nearly identically to their own (D13) |
| Gender (J16) | Information processing (D83) |
| Marital context (J12) | Gender difference in learning (I24) |