Sally Zhang

Ronald I. McKinnon Memorial Fellowship for Graduate Students | 2019 - 2020 Academic Year

Imperfect Information and Hidden Expenditures: A Lab-in-the-Field Experiment in Tanzania

What are the effects of information frictions within the household? Intuitively, a household member with low bargaining power but high information advantage can attempt to allocate more household resources to themselves through hiding their “extra” consumption. Zhang hypothesizes that information advantage benefits household members with lower bargaining power, but it also distorts their consumption choices towards goods that are easier to hide. In this study, Zhang proposes to quantify the effects of information structure on household resource allocation and individual consumption by experimentally varying information structure within the household and observability of goods.

Sally Zhang, Department of Economics

Sally Zhang is a PhD student in economics at Stanford University. Her research interest lies in the intersection of development, labor and behavioral economics, with a current focus on understanding intrahousehold dynamics in developing countries. Prior to attending Stanford, she earned a BA in philosophy, politics & economics (PPE) and mathematics from Pomona College.

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