How Falsifiable is the Collective Model? A New Test with an Application to Monogamous and Bigamous Households in Burkina Faso

Collective rationality is seldom if ever rejected in the literature, raising doubt about its falsifiability. We show that the standard approach to test the collective model with distribution factors may yield misleading inference. We generalize the model and provide an appropriate test procedure to assess its validity. Our new approach extends to households that include more than two decision-makers (e.g., polygamous households, adult children)....