An Experimental Study of Bargaining Behavior within Households in Rural Senegal

1. An Experimental Study of Bargaining Behavior within Households in Rural Senegal Gerrit Antonides and Rianne van Beek

2. Purpose of the study • Testing for different household economic models in experimental games • Unitary model vs. bargaining models; • Altruistic behavior; • Determinants of behavior.

3. Does gender division of labour, income and wealth explain altruistic behavior in experimental games? • From survey research a number of factors is known to influence decision power and division of consumption: • Partners’ wage rates, education, age, children; • Extra-household environmental parameters (culture, law, threat points); • Gender-specific environmental parameters (cost of child care, child alimony).

4. Experiment in two areas in Senegal where position of females is different • Sylvo-pastoral area, female work is considered relatively unimportant, but women partly own and take care of the cattle; • Agro-pastoral area, female work is considered relatively important, but women own few cattle.

5. Experimental games • Dictator game (dividing 10 points); • Ultimatum game, played both as allocator and recipient (dividing 10 points); • Prisoner’s dilemma game: C D • C 6, 6 0,10 • D 10,0 4, 4

6. Experimental procedures • All games were played both between spouses and between strangers of the opposite sex, in different order; • Spouses were located in different rooms to prevent communication; • 40 households from each of the two areas (N=160); • One of the games was selected randomly for pay-out in a choice of personal (clothing tissue) and household goods (rice, tea, sugar).

7. Offers made in Dictator Game

8. Conclusions from Dictator Game • Unitary model rejected in the agro-pastoral area; • Men offer less in the agro-pastoral area than in the sylvo-pastoral area, women behave the same; • Men in the agro-pastoral area offer less than women.

9. Offers made in Ultimatum Game

10. Conclusions from allocations in the Ultimatum Game • Unitary model rejected in the agro-pastoral area; • Both men and women offer less to their spouses in the agro-pastoral area than in the sylvo-pastoral area; • Women offer more to strangers, men offer less to strangers in the agro-pastoral area than in the sylvo-pastoral area; • Allocations in Dictator Game not very different from allocations in Ultimatum Game.

11. Demands made in Ultimatum Game

12. Conclusions from demands made in the Dictator Game • Men demand less in the agro-pastoral area than in the sylvo-pastoral area, women demand the same; • Men demand less than women in the agro-pastoral area, they demand about the same in the sylvo-pastoral area.

13. Behavior in Prisoner’s Dilemma Game

14. Conclusions from Prisoner’s Dilemma Game • Cooperative behavior of spouses (54.6%) not significantly different than cooperative behavior of strangers (64.0%).

15. Conclusions from different games • Unitary model rejected (from DG, UG and PD); • Men offer less in the agro-pastoral area than in the sylvo-pastoral area, also they offer less than women in the agro-pastoral area.

16. Choice of payment No relation with behavior in the games

17. Effects of decision making variables • Negative effect of reported income sharing on offering behavior in the games; • Negative effect of importance of wife’s work on husband’s offering; • No effect of management of finance, buying food, borrowing money, on offering behavior; • No effect of ownership of cattle, land, assets, on offering behavior; • Al of this is not supporting bargaining models.