Abstract

This thesis sets out to explore if farmers’ livestock investment decisions can be better understood by explicitly considering the fact that such decisions are embedded in a household context, i.e. by adding intra-household structural variables to conventional technology adoption/ livestock investment modelling. By drawing on the insights from anthropological studies of agricultural technology adoption decisions, from recent developments in economic intra-household modelling and from standard economic technology adoption models, the thesis tries to present a broader picture of the determinants of livestock investment decisions than is conventionally found in technology adoption studies.

Before entering the empirical analysis, the thesis offers a clarification and specification of the basis of the methodology and method choices involved in the interdisciplinary approach of the thesis. The consequences of mixing qualitative and quantitative methods are discussed, as are the limitations imposed on the depth of the analysis by quantifying something essentially social relational – i.e. intra-household dynamics. The theoretical notions underlying formal household models, and the critiques of them are considered, and it is argued that the exogenous measures of conjugal bargaining power required by formal model frameworks could be complemented by endogenous measures of bargaining power which capture more complex aspects of the multi-dimensional concept of conjugal bargaining power.

In the initial empirical analysis, the thesis offers an investigation of the separate decision-spheres of husbands and wives in the sampled rural Vietnamese families. It is found that wives tend to view themselves as having similar or higher levels of decision-making power over financial decisions than husbands perceive them to have, and it is suggested that this might be connected to the fact that the majority of wives have at their disposal a source of income, which they control relatively independently, i.e. the proceeds from poultry keeping. The thesis volunteers the hypothesis that women and men might have significantly different preferences when it comes to investments in small livestock, because of the fact that small livestock belongs to the wife’s separate sphere. These initial empirical connections point to the sensibleness of investigating further whether livestock investments decisions are better understood when analysed in a non-unified household model approach.

An attempt to broaden the informational base of the determinants of bargaining power is launched by constructing indicators of conjugal bargaining power, which are inspired both by the requirements of formal model testing and by ethnographic evidence and extensive field research. Though great effort is put into making the informational base as broad as possible, the limitations of measuring power quantatively are unambiguously acknowledged. A conventional econometric test of whether the assumptions of the unified household model are appropriate for the empirical setting indicates that conjugal bargaining powers are indeed shaping the daily expenditure choices in the sampled families. This prompts the question whether bargaining is not only governing expenditure choices but also larger investment choices such as investment in livestock types.

In the tentative analysis of the actual livestock investment choices made by the sampled households after the reception of micro-credit from Save the Children UK, the thesis estimates rough partial budgets for the investment options, and empirically investigates the risk and time preferences of the respondents. An exploratory logit model attempts to test the hypothesis that higher levels of female bargaining power influence livestock investment decisions, but fails to demonstrate the validity of this hypothesis. A number of possible errors as to the sample size and the preference ordering regimes are suggested, and it is proposed that the present thesis could serve as a pilot study for a more comprehensive study of the hypothesized connection between separate spheres, preference heterogeneity, conjugal bargaining powers and livestock investment decisions.