The custom of bride price involves the payment of goods or cash from the groom's family to the bride's family at the time of marriage. We present a theory that views bride price as a payment in hedonic markets for marital fidelity. Data from a household survey in Uganda are used to test the...

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...

It follows from a number of theoretical models of marriage that the scarcer women are relative to men, i.e. the higher the sex ratio, the less married women are likely to participate in the labor force. Such sex ratio effects may be stronger among less educated women. These predictions are...

If income pooling indicates primary earners' willingness to trade part of their income with spouses who earn less and work more in household production, then among specialized couples income pooling will be positively associated with the price of commercial domestic services, substitutes for...

A central component of his theory of marriage Becker's Demand and Supply (D&S) models of marriage are also among the most unique models he pioneered. Here I provide an overview of Becker's analysis of the effects of sex ratios - the ratio of men to women in marriage markets - on individual...