Preferences and Experiments

My work on preferences includes studies of risk preferences and time preferences of poor rural households in Ethiopia, Indonesia and Zambia. The research has aimed at assessing how these preferences are related to the level of poverty of households as well as some of the behavioural consequences of their preferences. Such behavioural consequences may also have important policy implications and may provide a basis for interventions on poverty, equity or environmental grounds. For example,

Are poor households mining their natural resource base because they are too poor and myopic to be able to conserve it?
Can smart interventions be designed to reduce welfare losses due to time inconsistent behavior?
Can smart safety nets be provided that can protect poor households from falling into poverty traps?
Can smart subsidy programs be designed that can help poor households climb out of poverty and achieve higher welfare levels?

Recently we started work using experiments to assess intrahousehold collaboration, gender balance in decision-making, generosity and intra-household cooperation in the project "Joint land certification: Towards Empowerment or Marginalization?" funded by the Research Council of Norway.

Recent papers:

Sosina Bezu and Stein Holden. Generosity and social distance in dictator game field experiments with and without a face. CLTS Working Paper No. 1/2013. Centre for Land Tenure Studies, Norwegian University of Life Sciences, Ås, Norway. Powerpoint

Holden, S. T. and Lunduka, R. (2010).Cash Constraints and Sticky Input Expenditures: -Experimental Evidence from Malawi. Paper prepared for presentation at Samfunnsøkonomenes Årskonferanse, 5-7. January 2011, at Norges Handelshøyskole, Bergen. Link.

Holden, S. T. and Lunduka, R. (2010). Impacts of the fertilizer subsidy program in Malawi: Targeting, household perceptions and preferences. Report to NORAD. Department of Economics and Resource Management, Norwegian University of Life Sciences. Link to paper. Link to blog briefs.

Earlier publications:

Wik, M., Aragie, T. K., Bergland, O. and Holden, S. T. (2004). On the Measurement of Risk Aversion from Experimental Data. Applied Economics 36, 2443-2451. Link

Holden, S. T. and Shiferaw, B.(2002). Poverty and Land Degradation: Peasants’ Willingness to Pay to Sustain Land Productivity. In C. B. Barrett, F. M. Place, and A. A. Aboud (eds.), Natural Resource Management in African Agriculture: Understanding and Improving Current Practices. CABI Publishing in Association with International Centre for Research in Agroforestry, Oxon and New York.

Holden, S. T., Shiferaw, B. and Wik, M.(1998). Poverty, Market Imperfections, and Time Preferences: Of Relevance for Environmental Policy? Environment and Development Economics 3: 105-130. See: Abstract

Holden, S. T., Shiferaw, B. and Wik, M.(1996). Poverty, Credit Constraints, and Time Preferences: Of Relevance for Environmental Policy? Paper presented at the XXIII International Conference of Agricultural Economists in Sacramento August 1997.

www.steinholden.com