CAN'T BUY ME LOVE? A FIELD EXPERIMENT EXPLORING THE TRADE-OFF BETWEEN INCOME AND CASTE-STATUS IN AN INDIAN MATRIMONIAL MARKET.

A large body of literature depicts that status-based discrimination is pervasive, but is silent on how economic incentive interacts with such discrimination. This study addresses this question by designing a field experiment in a reputable arranged marriage market that is prone to strong caste-status-based discrimination. We place newspaper advertisements of potential grooms by systematically varying their caste and income and focus on responses of higher-caste females to lower-caste males. The substantive finding is that despite the evidence of discrimination, discriminatory behavior of higher-status females decreases with an increase in the advertised monthly income of lower-status males. ( JEL C93, J12, J15) [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]