Economic development is often held to be beneficial for gender equality. However, there is good reason to believe that long lasting institutions like religion, legal traditions, and family practices, also matter. This paper provides an empirical assessment of the relative importance of...

Stable matchings may fail to exist in the roommate matching problem, both when utility is transferable and when it is not. We show that when utility is transferable, the existence of a stable matching is restored when there is an even number of individuals of indistinguishable characteristics...

We present a theory on migration of dual-earner couples, and test it in the context of international migration. Our model predicts that the probability that a couple emigrates increases in the earnings of the primary earner. The effect of the earnings of the secondary earner may go either way....

The present paper quantifies the economic consequences of eliminating the system of income splitting in Germany. We apply a dynamic simulation model with overlapping generations where single and married agents have to decide on labor supply and homework facing income and lifespan risk. The...

This paper studies the effect of child care provision on family structure. We present a model of a marriage market with positive assortative matching, where in equilibrium the poorest women stay single. Couples have to decide on the number of children and spousal specialization in home...

A large fraction of domestically abused women report that their partners interfere with their participation in education and employment. As of yet, mainstream economics has not dealt in any systematic way with this phenomenon and its implications for welfare policy. This paper puts forward a...

Both in the UK and in the US, we observe puzzling gender asymmetries in the propensity to outmarry: Black men are more likely to have white spouses than Black women, but the opposite is true for Chinese: Chinese men are half less likely to be married to a White person than Chinese women. We...

In this study we analyze whether the gender composition of siblings within a family affects the choice of College Major. The question is whether a family environment that is more gender-homogeneous encourages academic choices that are less gender stereotyped. We use the last name and the exact...

Neither marriage nor a legally enforceable contract serves any useful purpose if the parties have access to a perfect credit market. In the presence of credit rationing, efficiency and utility equalization are guaranteed only by a legally enforceable contract. Separate-property marriage may...

In most Western economies, the flourishing of the Welfare State has coincided with a decline of the role of the family: divorce has been introduced, and the number of marriages has decreased. We suggest that a taboo against divorce was part of the informal safety net in a period when social...