Forfeiting Agency: Evidence from a Household Experiment in Egypt

 Ghida Karbala, Marcela Ibanez, Gerhard Riener

Freedom of choice is a fundamental aspect of individuals’ social, economic, and political lives. Despite the significant value attached to the freedom of choice, some societies de facto restrict the right to decide to men while women assume a subordinate role. We investigate whether men and women attach different intrinsic values to decision rights and test whether preferences for forfeiting agency depend on social norms.  The results show that married women paired with their spouse have significantly lower willingness to retain the right to decide on resource allocation over a joint income than when paired with strangers. Elicited beliefs regarding the partner’s desire to maintain decision rights show that married women behave in a way consistent with the expectations of the spouse and the general cultural setting persisting in Egypt. Results suggest that in the presence of prescribed social identities and well-defined gender roles, outcomes, as expected by the standard bargaining models, fail to prevail. These models are incomplete without considering internal constraints to agency that are largely shaped by the existing cultural setting.