IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/afd/wpaper/2501.html

Do Judges Contribute to Gender Inequalities Following Divorce? An Empirical Analysis of the Determination of Alimony by French Judges

Author

Listed:
  • Cécile Bourreau-Dubois

    (Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) UMR 7522, CNRS, University of Lorraine)

  • Myriam Doriat-Duban

    (Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) UMR 7522, CNRS, University of Lorraine)

  • Agnès Gramain

    (Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) UMR 7522, CNRS, University of Lorraine)

  • Bruno Jeandidier

    (Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) UMR 7522, CNRS, University of Lorraine)

  • Jean-Claude Ray

    (Bureau d'Economie Théorique et Appliquée (BETA) UMR 7522, CNRS, University of Lorraine)

Abstract

Drawing upon an exhaustive dataset of French court decisions involving a claim for alimony, this paper presents new findings on the determinants of the level of alimony set by judges in divorce cases. In particular, we show that the amount of alimony can be explained as the result of a twofold logic of compromise. The first is a compromise between the amount of alimony that peers would have set in this specific case and the proposal of the ex-spouses. The second is a compromise between the debtor’s proposal and the creditor’s proposal, with greater weight given to the debtor’s proposal. In this way, our results shed light on the mechanisms by which judges’ decisions have little effect on reducing postdivorce economic gender inequalities, even though the main function of alimony is to reduce the differences in couples’ living standards after divorce. This weak corrective effect can be explained by the overemphasis on the proposal of the debtor and by the fact that judges incorporate the peer norm, which is itself dragged down by the proposals of the debtors.

Suggested Citation

  • Cécile Bourreau-Dubois & Myriam Doriat-Duban & Agnès Gramain & Bruno Jeandidier & Jean-Claude Ray, 2025. "Do Judges Contribute to Gender Inequalities Following Divorce? An Empirical Analysis of the Determination of Alimony by French Judges," Working Papers AFED 25-01, Association Francaise d'Economie du Droit (AFED).
    • Handle: RePEc:afd:wpaper:2501
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://afed.ovh/RePEc/afd/wpaper/AFED-WP-25-01.pdf
    File Function: First version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Amos Tversky & Daniel Kahneman, 1991. "Loss Aversion in Riskless Choice: A Reference-Dependent Model," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(4), pages 1039-1061.
    2. Dorian Kessler, 2020. "Economic Gender Equality and the Decline of Alimony in Switzerland," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 17(3), pages 493-518, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Wiebke Roß & Jens Weghake, 2018. "Wa(h)re Liebe: Was Online-Dating-Plattformen über zweiseitige Märkte lehren," TUC Working Papers in Economics 0017, Abteilung für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Technische Universität Clausthal (Department of Economics, Technical University Clausthal).
    2. A. Banerji & Jeevant Rampal, 2020. "Reverse Endowment Effect for a New Product," American Journal of Agricultural Economics, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 102(3), pages 786-805, May.
    3. Götte, Lorenz & Huffman, David B., 2005. "Do Emotions Improve Labor Market Outcomes?," IZA Discussion Papers 1895, IZA Network @ LISER.
    4. Xu Guan & Yulan Wang & Zelong Yi & Ying‐Ju Chen, 2020. "Inducing Consumer Online Reviews Via Disclosure," Production and Operations Management, Production and Operations Management Society, vol. 29(8), pages 1956-1971, August.
    5. Tian, Ye & Chiu, Yi-Chang & Sun, Jian, 2019. "Understanding behavioral effects of tradable mobility credit scheme: An experimental economics approach," Transport Policy, Elsevier, vol. 81(C), pages 1-11.
    6. Valeria Fanghella & Thi-Thanh-Tam Vu & Luigi Mittone, 2021. "Priming prosocial behavior and expectations in response to the Covid-19 pandemic -- Evidence from an online experiment," Papers 2102.13538, arXiv.org.
    7. Xingrong Hou & Jianmin Zeng & Hong Chen & Li Su, 2019. "The endowment effect in the genes: An exploratory study," Judgment and Decision Making, Society for Judgment and Decision Making, vol. 14(3), pages 293-298, May.
    8. Luigi Guiso, 2015. "A Test of Narrow Framing and its Origin," Italian Economic Journal: A Continuation of Rivista Italiana degli Economisti and Giornale degli Economisti, Springer;Società Italiana degli Economisti (Italian Economic Association), vol. 1(1), pages 61-100, March.
    9. Pingle, Mark & Mitchell, Mike, 2002. "What motivates positional concerns for income?," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(1), pages 127-148, February.
    10. Arkes, Hal R. & Hirshleifer, David & Jiang, Danling & Lim, Sonya, 2008. "Reference point adaptation: Tests in the domain of security trading," Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes, Elsevier, vol. 105(1), pages 67-81, January.
    11. Hossain Tanjim & Morgan John, 2006. "...Plus Shipping and Handling: Revenue (Non) Equivalence in Field Experiments on eBay," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 6(2), pages 1-30, January.
    12. Sibly, Hugh, 2002. "Loss averse customers and price inflexibility," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 23(4), pages 521-538, August.
    13. Shunda, Nicholas, 2009. "Auctions with a buy price: The case of reference-dependent preferences," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 67(2), pages 645-664, November.
    14. Christian Grund & Dirk Sliwka, 2007. "Reference-Dependent Preferences and the Impact of Wage Increases on Job Satisfaction: Theory and Evidence," Journal of Institutional and Theoretical Economics (JITE), Mohr Siebeck, Tübingen, vol. 163(2), pages 313-335, June.
    15. Bhagyashree Katare & Hyejin Yim & Anne Byrne & H. Holly Wang & Michael Wetzstein, 2023. "Consumer willingness to pay for environmentally sustainable meat and a plant‐based meat substitute," Applied Economic Perspectives and Policy, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 45(1), pages 145-163, March.
    16. Hu, Li & Ma, Hoi-Lam & Wang, Li & Liu, Yang, 2023. "Hiding or disclosing? Information discrimination in member-only discounts," Transportation Research Part E: Logistics and Transportation Review, Elsevier, vol. 171(C).
    17. Botond Kőszegi & Matthew Rabin, 2006. "A Model of Reference-Dependent Preferences," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 121(4), pages 1133-1165.
    18. repec:hal:pseose:halshs-01249514 is not listed on IDEAS
    19. Arlen, Jennifer H. & Tontrup, Stephan, 2015. "Strategic Bias Shifting: Herding as a Behaviorally Rational Response to Regret Aversion," EconStor Preprints 335573, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics.
    20. Daniel W. Elfenbein & Anne Marie Knott & Rachel Croson, 2017. "Equity stakes and exit: An experimental approach to decomposing exit delay," Strategic Management Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 38(2), pages 278-299, February.
    21. Shuli Liu & Xinwang Liu, 2016. "A Sample Survey Based Linguistic MADM Method with Prospect Theory for Online Shopping Problems," Group Decision and Negotiation, Springer, vol. 25(4), pages 749-774, July.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • K36 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - Family and Personal Law
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:afd:wpaper:2501. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: AFED (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/afeddea.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.