Does availability of common law marriage (CLM henceforth) in the U.S help explain variation in the labor force … legal protection to household producers at the margin between single status and marriage, we expect it to discourage labor …

In addition to regular marriage, Australia, Brazil, and 11 US states recognize common law (or de facto) marriage, which … allows one or both cohabiting partners to claim, under certain conditions, that an informal union is a marriage. France and … some other countries also have several types of marriage and civil union contracts. The policy issue is whether to abolish …

This paper reviews models of marriage, with special emphasis on how the sex ratio (the ratio of marriageable men to … women) can help explain measurable outcomes such as marriage formation, intra-marriage distribution of consumption goods …

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 …