Domestic violence and women’s autonomy in developing countries: theory and evidence Mukesh Eswaran and Nisha Malhotra University of British Columbia Abstract. This paper sets out a simple non-cooperative model of resource allocation within the household in developing countries that incorporates domestic violence as a vehicle for enhancing bargaining power. We demonstrate that the extent of domestic violence faced by women is not necessarily declining in their reservation utilities, or neces- sarily increasing in their spouses’. Using the National Family Health Survey data of India for 1998–99, we isolate the effect of domestic violence on female autonomy, taking into account the possible endogeneity of domestic violence through the choice of appropriate instruments. We provide some evidence for the evolutionary theory of domestic violence, which argues that such violence stems from the jealousy caused by paternity uncertainty in our evolutionary past. The findings have strong policy implications suggesting that it will take more than an improvement in women’s employment options to address the problem of spousal violence. JEL classification: J16, D7 Violence conjugale et autonomie des femmes dans les pays en voie de d´ eveloppement : th´ eorie et r´ esultats. Ce m´ emoire met en place un mod` ele simple d’allocation de ressources sans collaboration ` a l’int´ erieur d’un m´ enage dans des pays en voie de d´ eveloppement o ` u la violence conjugale est un v´ ehicule utilis´ e pour accroˆ ıtre le pouvoir de marchandage. On montre que l’importance de la violence conjugale faite aux femmes ne d´ ecline pas n´ ecessairement avec leurs exigences minimales, non plus qu’elle s’accroˆ ıt avec les exigences minimales de leurs ´ epoux. A l’aide des r´ esultats de l’Enquˆ ete nationale sur la sant´ e des familles de l’Inde pour 1998–99, on pr´ ecise l’effet de la violence conjugale sur l’autonomie des femmes, en tenant compte de l’endog´ en´ eit´ e possible de la violence conjugale ` a l’aide d’instruments appropri´ es. On fournit un certain support ` a la th´ eorie ´ evolutionnaire de la Without implicating them, we would like to thank Paul Beaudry, David Green, Louise Grogan, Vegard Iversen, Shilpi Kapur, Thomas Lemieux, Vadim Marmer, Marit Rehavi, participants of the DIET Workshop of the Department of Economics, the CWAG brownbag workshop of the Center for Women and Gender Studies (both at the University of British Columbia), and the World Bank. We are especially grateful to two anonymous referees for helpful comments on an earlier version of the paper. A grant from UBC’s Hampton Research Fund is gratefully acknowledged. Email: eswaran@econ.ubc.ca; malhotran@hotmail.com. Canadian Journal of Economics / Revue canadienne d’Economique, Vol. 44, No. 4 November / novembre 2011. Printed in Canada / Imprim´ e au Canada 0008-4085 / 11 / 1222–1263 / C  Canadian Economics Association