This paper examines how traditional marriage market institutions affect households' financial decisions. We study how … bride-to-groom marriage payments, i.e., dowries, influence saving behavior in rural India. Exploiting variation in firstborn … gender and heterogeneity in dowry amounts across marriage markets, we find that the prospect of paying higher dowry increases …

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 …

analyse mechanisms, we also use administrative data on marriage rates and household survey data on attitudes to violence … against women and marriage quality. We estimate that the elasticity of violence against women with respect to the surplus of … as a function of the sex ratio at birth and marriage quality measures, including self-reported domestic violence, are …

by an improvement in marriage market negotiations and this led to women marrying partners that consume less alcohol. …