Marriage as a Rat Race: Noisy Pre-Marital Investments with Assortative Matching

Ed Hopkins and V Bhaskar

Edinburgh School of Economics Discussion Paper Series from Edinburgh School of Economics, University of Edinburgh

Abstract: We study the incentive to invest to improve marriage prospects, in a frictionless marriage market with non-transferable utility. Stochastic returns to investment eliminate the multiplicity of equilibria in models with deterministic returns, and a unique equilibrium exists under reasonable conditions. Equilibrium investment is efficient when the sexes are symmetric. However, when there is any asymmetry, including an unbalanced sex ratio, investments are generically excessive. For example, if there is an excess of boys, then there is parental over-investment in boys and under-investment in girls, and total investment will be excessive.

Keywords: marriage; ex ante investments; gender differences; assortative matching tournament; sex ratio (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C78 D62 H31 J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 36
Date: 2011-08
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

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http://www.econ.ed.ac.uk/papers/id210_esedps.pdf

Related works:
Journal Article: Marriage as a Rat Race: Noisy Premarital Investments with Assortative Matching (2016)
Working Paper: Marriage as a Rat Race: Noisy Pre-Marital Investments with Assortative Matching (2011)
Working Paper: Marriage as a Rat Race: Noisy Pre-Marital Investments with Assortative Matching (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:edn:esedps:210

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