Optimal Intra-Household Decision Structure: Theory and Experimental Evidence from Colombia

This project aims at a better understanding on how households make decision. The household decisions structure all the aspects of the economic life and have large socio-economic implications. The project has two main parts. First, it develops a theoretical model of the allocation of authority in intra-household decision-making. The decision making process followed by the household is endogenously determined by the people involved in the decision: if both spouses decide to participate, the decision will be taken according to a Nash bargaining process; otherwise, the person who decides to participate is going to be the ultimate decision-maker (we call this situation ¿delegation¿). This choice will depend on various parameters such as time preferences, degree of congruence of partners over a project, opportunity cost of information search. Second, we will test the predictions drawn by the model in an original lab-in-the-field experiment that we will conduct in Colombia. The idea is to select couples and to carry out a baseline survey and a series of incentivized individuals and couple games.