Spousal communication and information sharing: Evidence from migrants and their spouses

Do spouses misreport information to each other to influence household decision-making? I analyze this question using a novel field experiment among Filipino migrants in the UAE and their spouses staying behind in the Philippines. Both migrants and their spouses staying behind have biased beliefs about each other’s finances. By experimentally varying spousal observability of reported information, I show that spouses staying behind underreport their income by 31 percent when it is observable to migrants. Among both migrants and their spouses staying behind, women are more likely to underreport income. Income is underreported when migrants do not communicate about or demand control over the household’s finances. These reporting patterns are consistent with a theory of strategic misreporting to influence migrant remittances.