American Economic Review
ISSN 0002-8282 (Print) | ISSN 1944-7981 (Online)
Trust and Reciprocity between Spouses in India
American Economic Review
vol. 105,
no. 5, May 2015
(pp. 621–24)
Abstract
I present results from the first trust game conducted among married couples. The experiment consisted of a one-shot trust game where spouses were taken into separate rooms, not allowed to communicate, given a significant endowment, and both strategies and payoffs were common knowledge. Results indicate that only 3 percent of spouses in the sender role transfer the entire amount; the average proportion sent is 57 percent of the endowment. The limited sending is costly because the household on average is walking away with half of the potential earnings. The results provide further evidence of the lack of Pareto Efficiency within the household.Citation
Castilla, Carolina. 2015. "Trust and Reciprocity between Spouses in India." American Economic Review 105 (5): 621–24. DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20151117Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C70 Game Theory and Bargaining Theory: General
- D13 Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- O12 Microeconomic Analyses of Economic Development
- Z13 Economic Sociology; Economic Anthropology; Social and Economic Stratification