Between 1958 and 1961, China experienced one of its worst famines in history. Birth rates plummeted during these years, but recovered immediately afterwards. The famine-born cohorts were relatively scarce in the marriage and labor markets. The famine also adversely affected the health of these...

This paper examines the role of social skills, as distinct from standard wage-determining human capital, in determining economic outcomes in labor and marriage markets. Social skill, or social capacity, is understood in our framework as the ability to maintain long-term relationships, whether...

This paper develops the collective marriage matching model, a behavioral and empirically flexible framework that incorporates both marriage matching and intrahousehold allocations. The model shows how marriage market equilibrium and bargaining power within the family are simultaneously...

This paper studies an equilibrium model of social and cognitive skills interactions in school, work and marriage. The model uses a common team production function in each sector which integrates the complementarity concerns of Becker with the task assigment and comparative advantage concerns of...

marriage formation, participation, and family labor supply. Intrahousehold transfers arise endogenously as the transfers that clear the marriage market. The intra-household allocation can be recovered from observations on marriage decisions. Introducing the marriage market in the collective...

estimate the sharing rule using 2000 Census data and implement a semi-parametric test of the over-identifying restrictions.

This paper examines the role of relationship skills in determining life cycle outcomes in education, labor and marriage markets. We posit a two-factor model with human capital and "relationship" or "partnering" skill. Relationship skill is understood in our framework as the ability to maintain...

estimated model shows that a concern for accumulating marriage specific capital is quantitatively significant in generating positive assortative matching in spousal ages at marriage, gender differences in spousal ages at marriage, and a preference for early marriage. Gender variations in...

The objective of the paper is to develop and estimate a non-parametric dynamic model of the marriage market. Individuals are differentiated by their age and current marital status. In each period, unmarried men and women choose whether they want to marry and who to marry. Equilibrium transfers...

The paper investigates how marriage rates and the gains to marriage are affected by city size in three societies, medieval Tuscany, China in 1980 and the United States in 2000. Internal migration was severely limited in China until the late seventies. Population supplies in each US city were...