Im Jahr 2003 wurden 88,4% aller Scheidungen in Österreich im Einvernehmen geschieden. Die einvernehmliche Scheidung erfordert

Since the 1970s almost all states have introduced a form of joint custody after divorce. We analyze the causal effect of these custody law reforms on the incidence of marriage and divorce. Our identification strategy exploits the different timing of reforms across states and the control group of...

This paper documents that changes in assortative mating patterns over the last four decades along the dimensions of age, ethnicity, religion and education are not responsible for the increasing marital instability in Austria. Quite the contrary, without the rise in the age at marriage, divorce...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

This paper uses data from the German Socio-economic Panel Study to examine the effect of personality traits on the formation and dissolution of domestic partnerships. Selection into marriage is associated with distinctly different personality profiles for men and women born before 1960,...

This paper asks whether the gap in subjective happiness between spouses matters per se, i.e. whether it predicts divorce. We use three panel databases to explore this question. Controlling for the level of life satisfaction of spouses, we find that a higher satisfaction gap, even in the first...

Die massiven Gesundheitsschäden, die Rauchen verursacht, sind allseits bekannt. Die Gründe, warum Menschen zu Rauchern werden, sind hingegen nicht so offenkundig. Der vorliegende Bericht untersucht den Zusammenhang von Familienform und Rauchverhalten von jungen Menschen in Deutschland auf...

The 1996 PRWORA reform introduced time limits on the receipt of welfare in the United States. We use variation by state and across demographic groups to provide reduced form evidence showing that such limits led to a fall in welfare claims (partly due to "banking" benefi ts for future use), a...

This article analyzes whether the commonly found negative relationship between parental separation in childhood and educational outcomes is causal or mainly due to selection. We use data on about 100,000 Swedish full biological siblings, born in 1951-64, and perform cross-section and...

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...