Children can be considered as a marriage-specific investment that increases the value of the marriage, making a divorce …

of the strongest incentives they currently have to choose formal divorce proceedings over the seemingly simpler option of …. After all, divorce proceedings provide the state with an opportunity to intercede into the process, thereby obtaining some …, however, bigamy becomes a thing of the past, eroding the state's ability to encourage divorce as a means of safeguarding the …

I look at the effects of making the exit costs of cohabitation as high as divorce on new and existing partnerships. I … exploit the Family Law Amendment Act, introduced in Australia in 2008, as an exogenous shock to the cost of exiting … relationship equivalent to a divorce. I hence exploit the time discontinuity produced by the reform to identify its effects on the …