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...

We consider a general equilibrium model where groups operating in a competitive market environment can have several members and make efficient collective consumption decisions. Individuals have the option to leave the group and make it on their own or join another group. We study the effect of...

We examine how a shift of bargaining power within households operating in a competitive market environment affects equilibrium allocation and welfare. If price effects are sufficiently small, then typically an individual benefits from an increase of bargaining power, necessarily to the detriment...

In the United States child adoption costs vary considerably, ranging from no out-of-pocket expense to $50,000 or more. What are the causes for the variability in adoption expenses? We administered a survey to a sample of Michigan adoptive families to link adoptive parent characteristics, child...

With the ageing of the European population, the housing choices of the elderly will have consequences on the whole housing market. In this paper we use data from the first two waves of the Survey of Health, Ageing and Retirement in Europe (SHARE) to analyse the residential mobility decisions of...

We reassess the “scarring” hypothesis by Clark et al. (2001), which states that unemployment experienced in the past reduces a person’s current life satisfaction even after the person hasbecome reemployed. Our results suggest that the scar from past unemployment operates via worsened...

We develop an economic theory of tolerance where lifestyles and traits are invested with symbolic value by people. Value systems are endogenous and taught by parents to their children. In conjunction with actual behavior, value systems determine the esteem enjoyed by individuals. Intolerant...

Recent theoretical contributions depart from the usual practice of treating individual attitude endowments as a black box, by assuming that these are shaped by the attitudes of parents and other role models. Attitudes include fundamental preferences such as risk preference, and crucial beliefs...

Plenty. This paper analyzes two broad questions: Does your first name matter? And how did you get your first name anyway? Using data from the National Opinion Research Centers (NORC’s) General Social Survey, including access to respondents first names from the 1994 and 2002 surveys, we extract...

The use of height data to measure living standards is now a well-established method in economics. Nevertheless, a neglected area in historical stature studies is the relationship between stature and family size, and statures are documented here to be positively related with family size. The...