CeDEx Seminar - Alistair Munro (National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies)

The strategy of (intra-household) conflict: an experiment on tacit bargaining between spouses in Indonesia.

In bargaining situations, the presence of focal points may create efficiencies but at the same strengthen inequalities in outcomes for the participants.  I adapt a simple Nash bargaining game with focal points (Isoni, A., Poulsen, A., Sugden, R., & Tsutsui, K. (2013). Focal points in tacit bargaining problems: Experimental evidence. European Economic Review, 59, 167-188)), by which the focality of some choices may be affected by the relationship between the players. I use the game to examine (i) the degree to which spouse-pairs behave differently from anonymous stranger-pairs and (ii) the degree to which behaviour, efficiency and inequality can be affected by directed advice on how to coordinate. Participants are married couples drawn from low-income communities in and around Jakarta, Indonesia.