Gerhard Riener

Coauthors: Marcela Ibanez and Ghida Karbala

Abstract

This paper uses an experimental approach to elicit causal effects of existing cultural norms and social expectations on the willingness to implement own pro-social decisions of joint-income with a partner, shedding light into the gray box of the bargaining process within the household. A representative sample of 640 individuals residing in Cairo, Egypt,were confronted with the decision to donate from a joint income to the Egyptian Red Crescent. In a first step, subjects were paired either with (a) their spouses, (b) a randomly chosen woman from the same population or (c) a randomly chosen man at which donation behavior over individual and joint income were elicited. In a second step subjects were asked to anonymously vote on how strongly they would like their decision to be implemented; the decision of the subject with the higher indicated number was then realized for payment; ties were broke  at random.
Results show the identity of the partner sharing the income to significantly affect the willingness of married women to have their decision implemented.
Women matched with their spouses express lower willingness to have their decision implement unlike women matched with a random man or a random woman.
In our analysis we study the determinants of this willingness with particular focus on prescribed gender roles.Elicited beliefs regarding partner's voting behavior show married women to have a voting behavior that is consistent with the expectations of the spouse and the general cultural setting persisting in Egypt. These results suggest that in the presence of prescribed social identities and well defined gender roles, outcomes as expected by the standard bargaining models fail to prevail. These household bargaining models and policies are incomplete without taking into account the willingness of married women to participate in intra-household decision making, a behavior that is to a large extend shaped by the existing cultural setting.