Child street vendors in India

Street vending is an important source of self-employment for the urban poor. I use primary observation, survey, and experimental data from Delhi to study this market. Partnering with street vendors to randomize both prices and the passersby they solicit to try to make sales, I find that even with identical goods, child vendors are 97% more likely to make a sale and earn more than twice that of adult vendors. Despite no differences in valuation for the goods, couples, and female customers are 90% and 27% more likely to buy than male customers. Females and couples are 50% more likely to be targeted by vendors than males and are charged higher prices on average (1.15-2 times) than males. I show that these findings are consistent with a model that incorporates altruism and a cost of refusal in the buyer’s decision-making. 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 confirms that vendors target females or couples, over males, because they consider who would find it harder to refuse. The paper demonstrates that sellers leverage insights into consumer social preferences to inform their selling strategies, which can be effective in markets with personal selling. 

That is from the job market paper of Ronak Jain, job market candidate from Harvard, updated draft to be uploaded by mid-November.