We propose a simple model of a mating economy in both monogamous and polygynous cultures, and derive implications for how polygyny affects individual and aggregate fertility. We find that an attractive woman is more likely to find a high-status husband. However, when polygyny is allowed,...

Since the 1950's, Nobel Prize economists such as Akerlof, Arrow, Becker, Heckman, Phelps and Stiglitz have analyzed discrimination in an economic framework, essentially in "positive" perspective. The two seminal models – Becker's model based on a "taste for discrimination" and Arrow and...

This paper defends the idea that Western modernity can be characterized by the rivalry of two institutions, the state and the market, competing for the charge of maintaining security against social violence while both are major sources of violence. It is so because the possibility of violence...

The financial and economic crisis entails the question of a return to organized societal regulation. After 30 years during which public authority occupied a marginal position, the financial world is begging for a return to some order. Thus, the question to be asked is that of the legitimate...

The authority of polity is strongly questioned on the grounds of the dogma of ungovernability. In this context of major upheavals resulting from globalisation, polity, until then the legitimate pilot of societal regulation, is progressively outplayed in favour of a market, the shortcomings of...

The effects of women's strong investments in career and their relative positions on the household division of labor, particularly the share of male partners in household work, constitute important but somehow unaddressed issues. We use the French Time Use Survey, focusing on couples where both...

We present a model of household behavior to explore the complex interactions between the decision-making process within the household and social norms. The household is viewed as two separate spheres – the female and the male – both linked by a public good and a "conjugal contract" trough...

This article analyses the effect of job quality on pathways to productive activities of older workers in Europe. Using comparative panel data from SHARE, we analyse the medium term effects of working conditions of workers aged 50-64 on three participation outcomes (staying in employment,...

We propose a search-matching model of the marriage market that extends Shimer and Smith (2000) to allow for labor supply. We characterize the steady-state equilibrium when exogenous divorce is the only source of risk. The estimated matching probabilities that can be derived from the steady-state...

Research aimed to analyze the role of the social actors, in France and in Quebec, in the governance of the conciliation. At the end of research, we propose the track of a strategy renewed around the concept of flexi-security, in a new and widened meaning. Thus, while the flexi-security of...