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

of an efficiency loss. Efficiency can be restored through suitably designed marriage contracts because they can provide …) use of marriage is affected by the possibility of divorce …

the separate effects of equal opportunities for women in the labor market and improved contraception on female education …

This paper presents an inter-temporal model of individual behavior with uncertainty about marriage and divorce and … which accommodates the possible presence of economies or diseconomies of scale from marriage. We show that a scenario of … higher marriage rates and higher divorce rates will be associated with higher savings rates in the presence of economies of …

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

This paper describes Gary Becker's theoretical models of marriage. At the micro-level, these are all rational choice … possible intellectual influences on Becker's theory of marriage, compares Becker's research on marriage with that of some … scholars interested in intra-marriage distribution, and documents that Becker's students at Chicago were more interested in …

In most Western economies, the flourishing of the Welfare State has coincided with a decline of the role of the family … the informal safety net in a period when social protection was provided by the family. Once the State started offering … suitable alternatives, the taboo was no longer expedient, and was dropped. For the same reasons, marriage has become less …

children. From this, should we infer that targeting transfers to women is good economic policy? In this paper, we develop a non …-cooperative model of household decision making to answer this question. We show that when women have lower wages than men, they may … necessarily mean that giving money to women is a good development policy. We show that depending on the nature of the production …

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 …-specific capital over time. At any given point in time, the gains to continued marriage depend on the accumulated stock of this capital …

Neither marriage nor a legally enforceable contract serves any useful purpose if the parties have access to a perfect … enforceable contract. Separate-property marriage may reduce and community-property marriage actually eliminate inefficiency, but …