We examine the determinants of expenditures on wedding celebrations by rural Indian families. Fieldwork, using open-ended interviews and focus group discussions in two villages in Karnataka State in Southern India, suggests that wedding celebrations are to a large extent a signal of social...

May 2000 - Some aspects of violent behavior are linked to economic incentives and deserve more attention from economists. In India, for example, domestic violence is used as a bargaining instrument, to extract larger dowries from a wife's family, after the marriage has taken place. Bloch and Rao...