Marriage, Divorce, Remarriage: The Catalyst Effect of Unilateral Divorce

Li Li and Eric Mak

MPRA Paper from University Library of Munich, Germany

Abstract: Unilateral divorce catalyzes the dissolution of unstable marriages and reorganizing better ones. To examine how unilateral divorce affects marital duration, we develop a simple DID stochastic dominance comparison across legal regimes and marital cohorts. This DID comparison identifies that unilateral divorce catalyzes the dissolution of unstable marriages; more importantly, remarriages after the termination of first marriages also undergo significantly faster in the unilateral regime. We study the underlying mechanism using a parsimonious unitary model of marriage-remarriage cycle with three features: 1) on-the-job (marriage) search (OJS); 2) marital investment; 3) OJS feedbacks as an exogenous spousal separation event in the equilibrium. Under unilateral divorce, the lowered time cost involved in separation results in front-loaded OJS.

Keywords: Marriage; OJS; Unilateral Divorce (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016-12-19
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:pra:mprapa:83330

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