This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages among middle-class Indians. We use a unique data set on individuals who placed matrimonial advertisements in a major newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste, education, beauty, and other attributes. We then compute a set of stable matches, which we compare to the actual matches that we observe in the data. We find the stable matches to be quite similar to the actual matches, suggesting a relatively frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage. However, because both sides of the market share this preference and because the groups are fairly homogeneous in terms of the distribution of other attributes, in equilibrium, the cost of wanting to marry within-caste is low. This allows caste to remain a persistent feature of the Indian marriage market.
I explore how a gender's scarcity may impact educational investments using exogenous variation in the marriage market of second generation Americans in early twentieth century. I find that worse marriage market conditions spur higher pre-marital investments: the effect for males is significant, while, for females, it is only observed in highly endogamous groups. When faced with an exogenously larger number of males per females, males' marriages appear to be less stable and more likely to involve natives and highly educated spouses, while women are less likely to work and, for those in high endogamous groups, marry more immigrants. (JEL C78, D83, J12, J16, N31)
Using a randomized experiment in Chile, we study the impact role models have in the context of a training program for micro–entrepreneurs. We show that being in a group randomly chosen to be visited by a successful alumnus of the program increases household income one year after, mostly due to increased business participation and business income. We also randomized the provision of personalized “consulting sessions” vis–à–vis group sessions, and observe similar effects on income, with the role model intervention being significantly more cost-effective and better suited for less experienced businesses. (JEL J24, L25, L26, M53, O14, O15)
Emergency contraception (EC) can prevent pregnancy after sex, but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. Over the past 15 years, access to EC has been expanded at both the state and federal level. This paper studies the impact of those policies. We find that expanded access to EC has had no statistically significant effect on birth or abortion rates. Expansions of access, however, have changed the venue in which the drug is obtained, shifting its provision from hospital emergency departments to pharmacies. We find evidence that this shift may have led to a decrease in reports of sexual assault
April 2012Abstract Emergency contraception (ec) can prevent pregnancy after sex, but only if taken within 72 hours of intercourse. Over the past 15 years, access to ec has been expanded at both the state and federal level. This paper studies the impact of those policies. We find that expanded access to ec has had no statistically significant effect on birth or abortion rates. Expansions of access, however, have changed the venue in which the drug is obtained, shifting its provision from hospital emergency departments to pharmacies. We find evidence that this shift may have led to a decrease in reports of sexual assault.JEL classification: J13, I18
This article analyses the effect of a reform granting alimony rights to cohabiting couples in Canada. A collective household model with a matching framework predicts that changes in alimony laws would affect existing couples and couples-to-be differently. For existing couples, it benefits the intended beneficiary but, for couples not yet formed, it generates offsetting intra-household transfers and lower intra-marital allocations for the beneficiary. Our empirical analyses confirm these predictions. Among couples united before the reform, obtaining the right to petition for alimony led women to lower their labour force participation but not among newly formed cohabiting couples. -Velosa provided very useful research assistance. We acknowledge useful comments and suggestions for improvement by the editor, Frederic Vermeulen, two anonymous reviewers, 7 This result is consistent with the empirical findings on marriage and divorce likelihoods by schooling: individuals sort positively into marriage based on schooling and couples with more schooling are less likely to divorce (Browning et al., 2014, Ch. 1). 8 See Iyigun and Walsh (2007) and Chiappori et al. (2008) for the complete derivations.
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