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...

"The NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health provides summaries of publications like this. You can sign up to receive the NBER Bulletin on Aging and Health by email. We develop a directed search model of relationship formation which can disentangle male and female preferences for types of partners and...