The existing literature on training is concerned with understanding the reasons why firms pay for the general skills of their workers, but without explaining which firms train which workers. This paper develops a theory that both explains the willingness of firms to pay for general training, and...

The paper compares Feinstein`s and Clark`s consumer price and real wage indices for the British industrial revolution. The sources for their weights and component price series are evaluated. While some of Clark`s innovations are improvements, many of his changes degrade the price index. A new...

This paper studies a marriage market with two-sided information asymmetry in whichthe gains from marriage are stochastic. Contracts specify divisions of ex-post realizedmarital surplus. I first study a game in which one side of the matching market offerscontracts. I show that when expected...

This paper explores the role of culture in determining divorce decisions by examining differences in divorce rates by country of origin of immigrants in the United States.  Because immigrants who arrived in the US at a young age are all exposed to a common set of American laws and institutions,...

This paper studies the effects of orphanhood on health and education outcomes of children in Tanzania. Using an original dataset on members of the extended family networks of orphaned children, I assess by how much the effects of orphanhood are reduced due to a systematic placement of the...

This paper investigates the effect of earnings and employment opportunities on pre-marital fertility. Using data from a sample of British women born in 1970, we estimate an independent competing risk harzard model of fertility and cohabitation decisions. Our results show that individual earnings...