How Bargaining in Marriage Drives Marriage Market Equilibrium

Marriage Market Equilibrium and Bargaining in Marriage*

This paper examines marriage market equilibrium when allocation is determined by bargaining in marriage rather than binding agreements between prospective spouses. We view sorting in the marriage market and allocation in marriage as a two-stage game in which prospective spouses, when they meet in the marriage market, foresee the allocation that would emerge from bargaining in marriage, but are ...

Marriage Markets and Bargaining Marriage Markets and Bargaining Between Spouses

Bargaining and Specialization in Marriage

Bargaining and Specialization in Marriage Can households make efficient choices? The fact that cohabitation and marriage are partnerships for joint production and consumption imply that their gains are highest when household members cooperate. At the same time, empirical findings suggest that spousal specialization and labor force attachment do influence the threat points of each spouse. As a c...

Marriage Market, Parents’ Bargaining Powers, and Children’s Education

This paper tests the unitary household model against the non-unitary models by estimating the effects of the provincial sex ratio and the parents’ nonlabor incomes on Indonesian household’s investment in children’s education. In urban areas the sex ratio is found to have a strong positive effect on education expenditures, while in rural areas it has little effect. The income pooling hypothesis ...

How do marriage market conditions affect entrance into cohabitation vs. marriage?

Widening gaps in marriage rates have received a great deal of attention in recent years, focusing on the availability of marriageable men in the local marriage market. At the same time, cohabitation has increased in prevalence, playing a role in declining marriage rates. This paper extends marriage market arguments to the formation of both cohabiting and marital unions, using contextual data at...