This paper studies how the risk of divorce affects the human capital decisions of a young couple. We consider a setting … where complete specialization (one of the spouses uses up all the education resources) is optimal with no divorce risk …. Symmetry in education (both spouses receive an equal amount of education) then acts like an insurance device in case of divorce …

We demonstrate that the notion of a “family constitution” (self-enforcing, renegotiation-proof family norm) requiring … family constitutions …

the legal costs of divorce, on the interrelationships among the decisions on marriage, fertility and divorce …

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 protection was provided by the family. Once the State started offering …

This paper bridges two distinct areas of inquiry: the economic theory of the family and behavioral research on time …-inconsistent preferences. In our model, hyperbolic discounting couples engage in household production activities, thereby accumulating family … and a temporary random shock to match quality. Couples whose match quality deteriorates may choose to divorce, and this is …

in their marriages and with their family life, and are not only the least likely to divorce, but have had the biggest … decrease in divorce since the 1970s compared to women without a college degree. In contrast, there have been fewer changes in …

This paper presents an inter-temporal model of individual behavior with uncertainty about marriage and divorce and … higher marriage rates and higher divorce rates will be associated with higher savings rates in the presence of economies of …