Using samples of polygamous and non-polygamous households from villages in rural areas south of Kano, Northern Nigeria we test basic theories of household behaviour. Husbands and wives play two variants of a voluntary contributions game in which endowments are private knowledge, but...

Dyson and Moore (1983) posit that women in South India enjoy relatively more agency than in the North. Their conclusions have become part of the standard picture of Indian rural society. In this paper, we examine using experimental data the implications of this regional contrast in female...

We conduct a novel lab experiment in which pairs of subjects make separable decisions about allocative efficiency and equity in different agency structures. In terms of equity, subjects appropriate all surplus when they can, and share equally when they have to negotiate. They achieve high...