This paper analyses the effect of extending equitable property division divorce laws to unmarried cohabiting couples in Australia. Using a triple-difference fixed effects approach we show that existing couples are more likely to make relationshipspecific investments after being exposed to laws...

We use elementary game-theoretical concepts to compare domestic equilibria with and without marriage. In particular, we examine the effects of marriage legislation, matrimonial property regime, and divorce court sentencing practice, on the decision to marry, and on the choice of game conditional...

Children can be considered as a marriage-specific investment that increases the value of the marriage, making a divorce more costly. We exploit the richness of pre- and post-marital information from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth 79, for the United States, to investigate the relation...

This paper presents a model of lifetime utility maximisation in which expectations of future marital transitions play a role in the determination of work hours. Married people with spouses who earn more are predicted to devote additional time to the labour market when they are confronted with a...

"We reconsider the well known Becker-Coase (BC) argument, according to which changes in divorce laws should not affect divorce rates, in the context of households which consume public goods in addition to private goods. For this result to hold, utility must be transferable both within marriage...

This paper examines the effects of reforms that reduced alimony on matching in the marriage market. Recent literature indicates that divorce law changes which reduce commitment or income-sharing upon separation will lead to an increase in assortative matching, as women forgo specialization which...

In this paper we derive an explicit model of negotiations between spouses when utility is (partially) transferable only in case of separation. We show that inefficient separation may occur in equilibrium even under consensual divorce law. This provides theoretical support for the view that...

There is evidence that the introduction of unilateral divorce legislation (UDL) starting in the late 1960s increased US divorce rates. We ask whether making divorce easier affected the educational structure of marriage. Based on marriage and divorce certificate data covering 1970-1988, we...

Under the tender years doctrine in effect until the 1970's, custody was virtually always awarded to the mother upon divorce. Gender-neutral custody laws introduced beginning in the 1970's provided married fathers, in principle, equal rights to custody. Subsequent marriage-neutral laws extended...

How does a shock to sex ratios affect marriage markets and fertility? I use the drastic change in sex ratios caused by World War II to identify the effects of unbalanced sex ratios on Russian women. Using unique data from the Soviet archives, the results indicate that male scarcity led to lower...