The ancient custom of dowry, that is, bride-to-groom marriage payments, remains ubiquitous in many contemporary … 1986-2007. Utilizing variation in firstborn gender and dowry amounts across marriage markets, the paper finds that the … prospect of higher dowry payments at the time of a daughter's marriage leads parents to save more in advance. The higher …

which women have more limited access to divorce than men … rate is associated with an increase in the incidence of physical violence against women by 0.50 percentage points, or 2 ….52 percentage points, or 2.87 percent. That an improvement in women's employment opportunities is associated with increased violence …

This paper reviews the empirical literature on the existence and impact of gender discriminatory laws on women …'s outcomes across various domains (categories) that constitute the Women in Business and the Law measure of gender inequality …. The evidence to date suggests that there are significant negative consequences of legal gender discrimination on women …

In patriarchal societies, sticky norms affect married women's social circles, their autonomy, and the outcomes of intra …-household bargaining. This paper uses primary data on women's social networks in Uttarakhand, India; the modal woman has only three friends … significant peer effects on only a few of the examined measures of women's autonomy. In contrast, peer effects exist on all …

This paper documents novel evidence of positive assortative matching in African marriage markets along cognitive and …