Towards a Behavioural Theory of the Household

2021 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 17H02498
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (B)
• Allocation Type: Single-year Grants
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic theory
• Research Institution: National Graduate Institute for Policy Studies
• Principal Investigator: Munro Alistair 政策研究大学院大学, 政策研究科, 教授 (10515654)
• Project Period (FY): 2017-04-01 – 2020-03-31
• Keywords: household experiments / behavioral economics / economics experiments / Uganda / Household decisions / Bayes Theorem

Outline of Final Research Achievements

I do experiments in Uganda and Japan to understand how married couples make decisions. I conducted:
1.The first economics experiment to compare how married couples, individuals and pairs of strangers process new information. Married couples are worse than strangers, but better than individuals. When spouses are advised by their spouses, they listen to advice when they should not. In contrast, strangers ignore advice when they should follow it. 2.An online experiment with Japanese couples on household decision-making and communication. 3.An experiment run in community centres in Tokyo. This it is the first economics experiment with households in Japan. I find couples are extremely reluctant to adjust gender roles even when it would be profitable for them to do so.
I then developed new theories about how households process information. Plans were heavily restricted by the Covid-19 epidemic. To avoid wasting public money, significant parts of the budget were returned unspent.

Free Research Field

Behavioral economics

Academic Significance and Societal Importance of the Research Achievements

I have pioneered economics experiments with married couples and this methodology has spread around the world to other research groups in Europe and the USA. On the basis of the method, new interventions to improve household well-being have been devised in Africa.