0 Water Sharing in Rural Africa: The Behavioral Relevance of Scarcity and Social Status

Making use of a repeated distribution game experiment, we investigate how African peasants distribute and enforce water access in irrigation schemes. Two questions are addressed. First, we investigate the influence of scarcity by comparing a treatment of abundant water availability with a treatment where water is insufficient for both players to reach a minimum production threshold. Second, we study to what extent social status influences distribution and enforcement of water access. For this, we complement the experimental data with data from a social status ranking exercise. JEL classification: D74, C9