Do Opposites Detract? Intrahousehold Preference Heterogeneity and Inefficient Strategic Savings
通过肯尼亚农村已婚夫妇的田野实验，发现夫妻在时间偏好上的差异会导致他们使用成本更高的个人账户，并损失更多利息收入，揭示了偏好异质性对家庭储蓄效率的负面影响。
This paper uses a field experiment to test whether intrahousehold heterogeneity in discount factors leads to inefficient strategic savings behavior. I gave married couples in rural Kenya the opportunity to open both joint and individual bank accounts at randomly assigned interest rates. I also directly elicited discount factors for all individuals in the experiment. Couples who are well matched on discount factors are less likely to use costly individual accounts and respond robustly to relative rates of return between accounts, while their poorly matched peers do not. Consequently, poorly matched couples forgo significantly more interest earnings on their savings.