Assortative Matching at the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World's Most Exclusive Marriage Market

Marc Goñi

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2022, vol. 14, issue 3, 445-87

Abstract: Using novel data on peerage marriages in Britain, I find that low search costs and marriage-market segregation can generate sorting. Peers courted in the London Season, a matching technology introducing aristocratic bachelors to debutantes. When Queen Victoria went into mourning for her husband, the Season was interrupted (1861–1863), raising search costs and reducing market segregation. I exploit exogenous variation in women's probability to marry during the interruption from their age in 1861. The interruption increased peer-commoner intermarriage by 40 percent and reduced sorting along landed wealth by 30 percent. Eventually, this reduced peers' political power and affected public policy in late nineteenth-century England.

JEL-codes: C78 D83 J12 J16 N33 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
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DOI: 10.1257/app.20180463

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