Papers

"Exploring gendered behavior in the field with experiments: Why public goods are provided by women in a Nairobi slum"

Fiona Greig and Iris Bohnet, January 2009
Kennedy School of Government, Harvard University
79 JFK Street, Cambridge, MA 02138, United States

Abstract
Women, and particularly women in all-female groups, appear to be especially adept at providing public goods in developing countries. We use a one-shot Public Goods game to explore the effect of sex and a group's sex composition on the voluntary provision of public goods in a Nairobi slum. Sex heterogeneity hurts the voluntary provision of public goods because women—but not men—contribute less in mixed-sex than same-sex groups. Women contribute as much as men in same-sex groups. This result is driven by women's pessimism and men's optimism about others’ contributions in mixed-sex groups rather than by gendered social preferences.

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