It is commonly observed that over time and across societies, women tend to marry older men. The traditional explanation for this phenomenon is that wages increase with age and hence older men are more attractive in the marriage market. This explanation, however, involves an implicit assumption...

We model the consequences of parental control over choice of wives for sons, for parental incentives to educate daughters, when the marriage market exhibits competitive dowry payments and altruistic but paternalistic parents benefit from having married sons live with them. By choosing uneducated...

In order to credibly sell legitimate children to their spouse, women must forego more attractive mating opportunities. This paper derives the implications of this observation for the pattern of matching in marriage markets, the dynamics of human capital accumulation, and the evolution of the...

When person A makes an offer to person B and B rejects it, then A may lose face. This loss of face is assumed to occur only if B knows for sure of A's offer. While under some circumstances loss of face can be rationalized by the consequences for future reputation, it may also enter directly into...

We study a matching model with heterogeneous agents, nontransferable utility and search frictions. Agents differ along a horizontal dimension (e.g. taste) and a vertical dimension (e.g. income). Agents' preferences coincide only in the vertical dimension. This approach introduces individual...