IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/wpc/wplist/wp02_11.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The economics of marriage

Author

Listed:
  • Alessandro Cigno

Abstract

In a separate-property jurisdiction, marriage may induce domestic cooperation, and enhance efficiency in the production of children, because it may lend credibility to the prospective main earner's promise to compensate the main childcarer when the children will no longer be economically dependent on them. In a community-property jurisdiction, marriage will induce domestic cooperation, and enhance efficiency in the production of children, because it rules out strategic behaviour. Whatever the matrimonial property regime, reducing the cost or difficulty of obtaining a divorce will have no permanent effect on the divorce rate. In a separate-property jurisdiction, it will encourage marriage, and induce more married women to specialize in market work. Couples should be allowed to choose the matrimonial property regime.

Suggested Citation

  • Alessandro Cigno, 2011. "The economics of marriage," CHILD Working Papers wp02_11, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    • Handle: RePEc:wpc:wplist:wp02_11
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.child.carloalberto.org/images/wp/child02_2011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Alessandro Cigno, 2007. "A Theoretical Analysis of the Effects of Legislation on Marriage, Fertility, Domestic Division of Labour, and the Education of Children," CESifo Working Paper Series 2143, CESifo.
    2. Daniela Del Boca & Christopher J. Flinn, 2004. "Modes of Spousal Interaction and the Labor Market Environment," CHILD Working Papers wp12_05, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.
    3. Giulio Fella & Paola Manzini & Marco Mariotti, 2004. "Does Divorce Law Matter?," Journal of the European Economic Association, MIT Press, vol. 2(4), pages 607-633, June.
    4. Cigno, Alessandro, 2009. "What's the Use of Marriage?," IZA Discussion Papers 4635, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    5. Lundberg, Shelly & Pollak, Robert A, 1994. "Noncooperative Bargaining Models of Marriage," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 84(2), pages 132-137, May.
    6. Del Boca, Daniela & Flinn, Christopher J, 1995. "Rationalizing Child-Support Decisions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1241-1262, December.
    7. Betsey Stevenson & Justin Wolfers, 2007. "Marriage and Divorce: Changes and their Driving Forces," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 21(2), pages 27-52, Spring.
    8. Bargain, Olivier & González, Libertad & Keane, Claire & Özcan, Berkay, 2012. "Female labor supply and divorce: New evidence from Ireland," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 56(8), pages 1675-1691.
    9. Manser, Marilyn & Brown, Murray, 1980. "Marriage and Household Decision-Making: A Bargaining Analysis," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 21(1), pages 31-44, February.
    10. Elena Stancanelli, 2007. "Marriage and Work: an analysis for French couples in the last decade," Documents de Travail de l'OFCE 2007-10, Observatoire Francais des Conjonctures Economiques (OFCE).
    11. Kai A. Konrad & Kjell Erik Lommerud, 2000. "The bargaining family revisited," Canadian Journal of Economics/Revue canadienne d'économique, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 33(2), pages 471-487, May.
    12. Becker, Gary S, 1973. "A Theory of Marriage: Part I," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 81(4), pages 813-846, July-Aug..
    13. Zelder, Martin, 1993. "Inefficient Dissolutions as a Consequence of Public Goods: The Case of No-Fault Divorce," The Journal of Legal Studies, University of Chicago Press, vol. 22(2), pages 503-520, June.
    14. Kaushik Basu, 2006. "Gender and Say: a Model of Household Behaviour with Endogenously Determined Balance of Power," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 116(511), pages 558-580, April.
    15. Scott Drewianka, 2008. "Divorce law and family formation," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 485-503, April.
    16. Scott Drewianka, 2004. "How Will Reforms of Marital Institutions Influence Marital Commitment? A Theoretical Analysis," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 2(3), pages 303-323, September.
    17. Smith, Ian, 1997. "Explaining the Growth of Divorce in Great Britain," Scottish Journal of Political Economy, Scottish Economic Society, vol. 44(5), pages 519-544, November.
    18. Leora Friedberg, 1998. "Did Unilateral Divorce Raise Divorce Rates? Evidence from Panel Data," NBER Working Papers 6398, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Niko Matouschek & Imran Rasul, 2008. "The Economics of the Marriage Contract: Theories and Evidence," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 51(1), pages 59-110, February.
    20. González, Libertad & Viitanen, Tarja K., 2009. "The effect of divorce laws on divorce rates in Europe," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(2), pages 127-138, February.
    21. Clark, Simon, 1999. "Law, Property, and Marital Dissolution," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 109(454), pages 41-54, March.
    22. Becker, Gary S, 1974. "A Theory of Marriage: Part II," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 82(2), pages 11-26, Part II, .
    23. Michael Peters & Aloysius Siow, 2002. "Competing Premarital Investments," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(3), pages 592-608, June.
    24. Pierre-Andre Chiappori & Bernard Fortin & Guy Lacroix, 2002. "Marriage Market, Divorce Legislation, and Household Labor Supply," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 110(1), pages 37-72, February.
    25. David Lam, 1988. "Marriage Markets and Assortative Mating with Household Public Goods: Theoretical Results and Empirical Implications," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 23(4), pages 462-487.
    26. Drago, Robert & Black, David & Wooden, Mark, 2004. "Female Breadwinner Families: Their Existence, Persistence and Sources," IZA Discussion Papers 1308, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    27. Shelly Lundberg & Robert A. Pollak, 1996. "Bargaining and Distribution in Marriage," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 10(4), pages 139-158, Fall.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 1997. "The Value of Children and Immigrants in a Pay-As-You-Go Pension System: A Proposal For a Partial Transition to a Funded System," CEPR Discussion Papers 1734, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    2. Fort, Margherita, 2005. "Education and timing of births: evidence from a natural experiment in Italy," ISER Working Paper Series 2005-20, Institute for Social and Economic Research.
    3. Alessandro Cigno, 2006. "A constitutional theory of the family," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 19(2), pages 259-283, June.
    4. Helmuth Cremer & Firouz Gahvari & Pierre Pestieau, 2008. "Pensions with heterogenous individuals and endogenous fertility," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(4), pages 961-981, October.
    5. Sinn, Hans-Werner, 2004. "The pay-as-you-go pension system as fertility insurance and an enforcement device," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 88(7-8), pages 1335-1357, July.
    6. De Paola, Maria & Scoppa, Vincenzo, 2005. "The Role of Family Ties in the Labour Market. An Interpretation Based on Efficiency Wage Theory," MPRA Paper 8956, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    7. Francavilla, Francesca & Giannelli, Gianna Claudia & Grilli, Leonardo, 2008. "School Attendance of Children and the Work of Mothers: A Joint Multilevel Model for India," IZA Discussion Papers 3531, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    8. Gianna Claudia Giannelli & Francesca Francavilla, 2007. "The Relation between Child Labour and Mothers’ Work: The Case of India," CHILD Working Papers wp22_07, CHILD - Centre for Household, Income, Labour and Demographic economics - ITALY.

    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. John Douglas Skåtun, 2017. "Bargaining on your Spouse: Coasean and Non-Coasean Behaviour Within Marriage," Journal of Family and Economic Issues, Springer, vol. 38(2), pages 263-278, June.
    2. Alessandro Cigno, 2012. "Marriage as a commitment device," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 10(2), pages 193-213, June.
    3. Chigavazira, Abraham & Fisher, Hayley & Robinson, Tim & Zhu, Anna, 2019. "The Consequences of Extending Equitable Property Division Divorce Laws to Cohabitants," Working Papers 2019-02, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    4. Martin Halla & Wolfgang Frimmel & Rudolf Winter-Ebmer, 2016. "How Does Parental Divorce Affect Children's Long-term Outcomes?," CDL Aging, Health, Labor working papers 2016-03, The Christian Doppler (CD) Laboratory Aging, Health, and the Labor Market, Johannes Kepler University Linz, Austria.
    5. Fisher, H., 2011. "Divorce Property Division and the Decision to Marry or Cohabit," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1101, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    6. Bowles, Roger & Garoupa, Nuno, 2002. "Household dissolution, child care and divorce law," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 22(4), pages 495-510, December.
    7. Alessandro Cigno, 2007. "A Theoretical Analysis of the Effects of Legislation on Marriage, Fertility, Domestic Division of Labour, and the Education of Children," CESifo Working Paper Series 2143, CESifo.
    8. Marcassa Stefania, 2013. "Divorce laws and divorce rate in the US," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 13(1), pages 1-39, August.
    9. Man Si, 2015. "Intrafamily bargaining and love," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 13(4), pages 771-789, December.
    10. Matthew J. Baker & Joyce P. Jacobsen, 2007. "Marriage, Specialization, and the Gender Division of Labor," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 25, pages 763-793.
    11. Martin Halla & Mario Lackner & Johann Scharler, 2016. "Does the Welfare State Destroy the Family? Evidence from OECD Member Countries," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 118(2), pages 292-323, April.
    12. Akiko Maruyama & Takashi Shimizu & Kazuhiro Yamamoto, 2009. "Exit and Voice in a Marriage Market," Discussion Papers in Economics and Business 09-04, Osaka University, Graduate School of Economics.
    13. Alessandro Cigno, 2014. "Is Marriage as Good as a Contract?," CESifo Economic Studies, CESifo, vol. 60(3), pages 599-612.
    14. Martin Halla, 2013. "The Effect Of Joint Custody On Family Outcomes," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(2), pages 278-315, April.
    15. Barham, Vicky & Devlin, Rose Anne & Yang, Jie, 2009. "A theory of rational marriage and divorce," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(1), pages 93-106, January.
    16. Clarisse Coelho & Nuno Garoupa, 2006. "Do Divorce Law Reforms Matter for Divorce Rates? Evidence from Portugal," Journal of Empirical Legal Studies, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 3(3), pages 525-542, November.
    17. Patricia Apps & Ray Rees, 2007. "Household Models: An Historical Perspective," CESifo Working Paper Series 2172, CESifo.
    18. Heggeness, Misty L., 2020. "Improving child welfare in middle income countries: The unintended consequence of a pro-homemaker divorce law and wait time to divorce," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 143(C).
    19. Sigve Tjøtta & Kjell Vaage, 2008. "Public transfers and marital dissolution," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 21(2), pages 419-437, April.
    20. Mumcu, Ayse & Saglam, Ismail, 2006. "Marriage and Divorce in a Model of Matching," MPRA Paper 1907, University Library of Munich, Germany.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    divorce; alimony; matrimonial property; commitment; fertility; domestic division of labour;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • D13 - Microeconomics - - Household Behavior - - - Household Production and Intrahouse Allocation
    • J12 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure
    • J13 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Fertility; Family Planning; Child Care; Children; Youth
    • J16 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • K30 - Law and Economics - - Other Substantive Areas of Law - - - General

    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:wpc:wplist:wp02_11. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: . General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/childit.html .

    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: Giovanni Bert (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/childit.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service hosted by the Research Division of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis . RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.