Kinship Taxation as an Impediment to Growth: Experimental Evidence from Kenyan Microenterprises

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Squires, Munir
• 署名单位: University of British Columbia
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueae025
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 2558-2579
• 关键词: risk-sharing networks; forced solidarity; field experiment; insurance; consumption; misallocation; INFORMATION; RECIPROCITY; INVESTMENT; SEPARATION

摘要

This paper documents strong pressure to share income faced by entrepreneurs in a developing country setting. This 'kinship tax' can distort productive decisions, including investment. A lab experiment with 361 Kenyan entrepreneurs reveals that a third of them face distortionary pressure to share income. This kinship tax is higher for men, and increasing in entrepreneurial ability. Using a pre-existing randomised cash transfer experiment, I find that only male entrepreneurs who do not face distortionary kinship taxation invest these transfers. Imposing some parametric assumptions, I estimate that kinship taxation decreases aggregate productivity among firms in this sample by one-quarter.