Integrating Roy with Becker, this paper studies occupational choice and matching in the labor market. Our model generates occupation earnings distributions which are right skewed, have firm fixed effects, and large changes in aggregate earnings inequality without significant changes in within...

Parents transfer wealth to their children in many ways. The dowry is distinctive because it is a large transfer made to a daughter at the time of her marriage. In an insightful essay, Goody (1973) proposed that the dowry is a premortem inheritance to the bride. A daughter obtains a wealth...

When married daughters leave their parental home and their married brothers do not, altruistic parents provide dowries for daughters and bequests for sons in order to mitigate a free riding problem between their married sons and daughters. The theory has predictions on the form of the dowry...

When married daughters leave their parental home and their married brothers do not, altruistic parents provide dowries for daughters and bequests for sons in order to mitigate a free riding problem between their married sons and daughters. The theory has predictions on the form of the dowry...

The returns to scale of marriage markets have important behavioral and welfare consequences. It is quantitatively difficult to estimate the returns to scale because, due to endogenous migration, the marriage market size is endogenous. This paper addresses the endogeneity in two ways. First, it...