Groups, Networks, and Hierarchy in Household Private Transfers: Evidence from Fiji

Although economists have extensively studied private transfers exchanged among households within a network, those exchanged directly with groups to which the household belongs ? such as ritual gifts, communal work, and church donations --- have received very limited attention. Using original household survey data gathered in rural Fiji, this paper shows that extant studies on across-household private transfers are incomplete for two reasons. First, group-based transfers are much greater than networkbased transfers because of significant contributions to groups for their provision of local public goods. Second, group-based transfers significantly influence network-based transfers through the social hierarchy: A comparison of various groups (e.g., kin and church groups) and social ranks (e.g., gender, disability, elite kin, and religious elite) indicates that network-based transfers adjust to hierarchy bias in group-based transfers among fixed members depending on the physical and social connections of groups and networks.