Social Norms or Income Taxation - What Drives Couple's Labor Supply? Experimental Evidence

We investigate the determinants of couples labor supply within an experimental setting. On the one hand, we are interested in the e ect of taxes on couples labor supply, but on the other hand we focus on factors beyond purely economic incentives: the role of the social norm of a male breadwinner. 58 established cohabiting heterosexual and married couples (116 participants) perform under a piece rate payment on real e ort tasks (i.e. solving mazes) within a given time and with work e ort (i.e. number of solved mazes) serving as our proxy for labor supply. We demonstrate that gender identity and (dis)satisfaction with income opportunities dominated the e ects of taxation within a couple context.