Centre for Development Economics
Department of Economics
Delhi School of Economics
ANNOUNCE A SEMINAR
by
Ronak Jain
(University of Zurich)
(Monday, January 27, 2025, at 11:30 AM IST )
Venue: Amex Room
Abstract:-
Street vending is an important source of self-employment for the urban poor. I combine observational, survey, and experimental data from Delhi to study this market. Partnering with vendors to randomize prices and passersby they solicit, I find that even with identical goods, child vendors are 97% more likely to make a sale and earn 2x more than adult vendors. Despite no differences in valuations, couples and women are 90% and 28% more likely to buy than men and they are targeted more often and quoted higher prices. I show that these findings are consistent with a model that incorporates altruism and a cost of refusal in the buyer’s decision-making. In line with this, I find that passersby are more altruistic towards children than adults in an incentivized dictator game. Additionally, requesting passersby to buy, increases the purchasing probability twofold for adult vendors and fourfold for child vendors. Survey data further confirms that vendors target women and couples, over men, because they consider who would find it harder to refuse. The paper shows that sellers strategically leverage insights about social preferences to influence buyer decision-making and this creates a source of comparative advantage for children in this market.