Listen to her: Gender differences in information diffusion within the household

Abstract

We study how economic information diffuses within the household, leveraging an information-provision experiment with a representative sample of households from Germany. A random sample of household members received information about their household’s position in the income distribution. When provided with information directly, there are no gender differences in how individuals update their beliefs. However, we observe significant gender disparities in the diffusion of information within the household. Specifically, when only the husband receives the information, it influences the wife’s beliefs; however, when only the wife receives the information, it does not affect the husband’s beliefs.