Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms

0459150 - NHÚ 2019 RIV CZ eng V - Research Report
Bartoš, Vojtěch
Seasonal scarcity and sharing norms.
Prague: CERGE-EI, 2016. 53 s. CERGE-EI Working Paper Series, 557. ISSN 1211-3298
Institutional support: RVO:67985998
Keywords : Afghanistan * scarcity * seasonality
OECD category: Economic Theory
http://www.cerge-ei.cz/pdf/wp/Wp557.pdf

Sharing provides one of few sources of insurance in poor communities. It gains prominence
during adverse shocks, often largely aggregate, when it is also costliest for individuals to share. Yet it is little understood how scarcity affects individual willingness to share and willingness to enforce sharing from others, an important ingredient in sustaining prosocial behavior. This is what this paper examines. I conduct repeated within-subject lab-in-the-field experiments among Afghan subsistence farmers during a lean and a postharvest season of relative plenty. These farmers experience seasonal scarcities annually. Using dictator and third party punishment games I separate individual sharing behavior from enforcement of sharing norms. While sharing exhibits high degree of temporal stability at both the aggregate, and, to a large extent, at the individual level, the enforcement of sharing norms is substantially weaker during the lean season. The findings suggest that the farmers are capable of sustaining mutual sharing through transitory periods of scarcity. It remains an open question whether exposure to unexpected shocks or prolonged periods of scarcity might result in breakdown of prosociality due to loosened sharing norms enforcement on a community level.
Permanent Link: http://hdl.handle.net/11104/0259390