Abstract
We present the results of an experiment measuring social preferences within couples in a context where intra-household pay-off inequality can be reduced at the cost of diminishing household income. We measure social norms regarding this efficiency-equality trade-off and implement a cross-country comparison between France and Germany. In particular, we show that German households are more inequality averse and are thus less efficient than French households. A decomposition of this difference reveals that approximately 40% is driven by diverging sample compositions in the two countries, while 60% of the initial French/German difference remains unexplained. Beliefs differ significantly from observed behavior in both countries. Efficient choices are overestimated in the German sample and underestimated in the French.
Keywords
Intra-household allocation; Inequality aversion; Pareto efficiency; social norms;
JEL codes
- C71: Cooperative Games
- C91: Laboratory, Individual Behavior
- C92: Laboratory, Group Behavior
- D13: Household Production and Intrahousehold Allocation
Replaced by
Miriam Beblo, Denis Beninger, François Cochard, Hélène Couprie, and Astrid Hopfensitz, “Efficiency-Equality Trade-off within French and German Couples – A Comparative Experimental Study”, Annales d'Économie et de Statistique, Paris, n. 117-118, June 2015, pp. 233–252.
Reference
Miriam Beblo, Denis Beninger, François Cochard, Hélène Couprie, and Astrid Hopfensitz, “Equality-Efficiency Trade-off within French and German Couples – A Comparative Experimental Study”, TSE Working Paper, n. 12-374, November 2012.
See also
Published in
TSE Working Paper, n. 12-374, November 2012