We derive distributional effects for a non-cooperative alternative to the unitary model of household behaviour. We consider the Nash equilibria of a voluntary contributions to public goods game. Our main result is that, in general, the two partners either choose to contribute to different public...

Empirical studies of intra-household allocation has revealed that, in many instances, gender is an important determinant in the allocation of resources within the household.  Yet, within the theoretical literature, why gender matters within the household remains an open question.  In this...

This paper tests three hypotheses concerning intra-household resource allocation in rural China. First, whether increasing the women's bargaining power alters household expenditure patterns. Second, whether households allocate fewer resourced to daughters than to sons. Third, whether increasing...

Drawing upon data from Ethiopia, we highlight the relationship between investments in child schooling and key factors related to household characteristics, supply and quality of schooling, and income shocks. The unique contribution of this study stems from our examination of the effect of...

We report on a randomized field experiment using price incentives to address both economic and gender inequality in land tenure formalization.  During the 1990s and 2000s, nearly two dozen African countries proposed de jure land reforms extending access to formal, freehold land tenure to...

Children are increasingly treated as active members in the household.  However, their preferences over consumption and leisure are rarely modelled.  This paper considers heterogeneity in siblings' preferences over leisure and consumption and builds a theoretical and empirical model for...

Several models of intra-household decision making have been suggested in the literature. One important dichotomy is between non-cooperative and cooperative models (including specific models of bargaining). The other important distinction is between models that allow for caring and those that do...

Maximisation of utility by a single consumer subject to a linear budget constraint is well known to imply strong restrictions on the properties of demand functions. Empirical applications to data on households however frequently reject these restrictions. In particular such data frequently show...

We study noncooperative models with two agents and several voluntarily contributed public goods. We focus on interior equilibria in which neither agent is bound by non negativity constraints, establishing the conditions for existence and uniqueness of the equilibrium. While adding-up and...

Using the Progresa data from Mexico, we investigate intra-household decision making using a variety of outcomes. We exploit both the experimental nature and the (short) panel dimension of the data to measure the impact of exogenous changes in the intra-household distribution of resources on...