In this hybrid research seminar on Thursday 21st November 2024 at 12:00-13:00 CET, Ronak Jain (University of Zurich) will present her research titled "Entrepreneurs of Emotions: Evidence from Street Vending in India".
Abstract: 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 (4-38%) 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. In line with this, 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 further 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
The Zoom link to join the seminar online can be found here. This event is open to the public. All who are interested in this topic are very welcome to join the seminar. After the presentation, there will be time for questions and discussion.
For any queries related to our UNU-MERIT Seminar Series, please contact Sneha Marydas and Cecilia Seri by sending an email to seminars@merit.unu.edu