This paper provides a first microeconomic foundation for the institution of marriage. Based on a model of reproduction …, mating, and parental investment in children, we argue that marriage serves the purpose of attenuating the risk of mating …, marriage circumscribes female infidelity and mate poaching among men, which reduces average levels of paternal uncertainty in …

This paper provides a first microeconomic foundation for the institution of marriage. Based on a model of reproduction …, mating, and parental investment in children, we argue that marriage serves the purpose of attenuating the risk of mating …, marriage circumscribes female infidelity and mate poaching among men, which reduces average levels of paternal uncertainty in …

of matching in the marriage market, and empirically evaluates this in the context of arranged marriages among middle … preference for in-caste marriage. We find that in equilibrium, as predicted by our theoretical framework, these preferences do … caste. This suggests a reason whycaste remains a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market. …

A collective marriage matching model is estimated and calibrated to quantify the share of returns to schooling that is … realized through marriage. The predictions of the model are matched with US data on the relationship between schooling and wage … marriage. Counterfactual analysis conducted with the model, suggests that US middle aged men and women are earning in the order …

-sectional differences between cohabiting and married couples. To this end, we build a two-period model of marriage and cohabitation with …

Akerlof and Kranton (2000) and apply it to the marriage decision. The empirical evidence is consistent with the idea that … people are more likely to marry when their incomes approach a financial level associated with idealized norms of marriage. We … hypothesize that the marriage ideal is determined by the median income in an individual’s local reference group. After controlling …