Data and Code for: Intrahousehold Consumption Allocation and Demand for Agency: A Triple Experimental Investigation

We conduct lab experiments to investigate demand for consumption agency in married couples from Pakistan. We find subjects are often no better at guessing their spouse's preferences than those of a stranger, and many subjects disregard what they believe or know about others' preferences when assigning them a consumption bundle. This suggests that individual executive agency within the household has instrumental value. We indeed find significant evidence of demand for agency in all experiments, and this demand varies with the cost and anticipated instrumental benefit of agency. But subjects often make choices incompatible with pure instrumental motives -- e.g., paying for agency even when they know their partner assigned them their preferred choice. We also findfemale subjects to be quite willing to exert agency even though, based on survey responses, they have little executive agency within their household.