Income hiding and informal redistribution: A lab-in-the-field experiment in Senegal

A-Tier
Journal: Journal of Development Economics
Year: 2019
Volume: 137
Issue: C
Pages: 78-92

Score contribution per author:

1.341 = (α=2.01 / 3 authors) × 2.0x A-tier

α: calibrated so average coauthorship-adjusted count equals average raw count

Abstract

We estimate the hidden cost of social obligations to redistribute exploiting data from a controlled setting in urban Senegal, which combines lab-in-the-field measures and out-of-lab follow-up data. We estimate a social tax of about 9 percent. When given the opportunity to get hidden income, individuals decrease by 26 percent the share of gains they transfer to kin — mostly outside the household — and increase health and personal expenses. We expand on prior literature by both identifying the individual cost of informal redistribution and then relating it to postexperiment resource-allocation decisions, and by disentangling intra- and interhousehold redistributive pressure.

Technical Details

RePEc Handle
repec:eee:deveco:v:137:y:2019:i:c:p:78-92
Journal Field
Development
Author Count
3
Added to Database
2026-01-24