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...

Underinvestment in agriculture -- a major cause of rural poverty -- may be due to difficulties to detect 'contingency', defined as the influence one may exert on the distribution of returns on investment. Recently experienced contingency may create a mismatch between perceived and actual...