Marriage and the city: Search frictions and sorting of singles

Pieter Gautier, Michael Svarer and C. N. Teulings (c.n.teulings@outlook.com)

Journal of Urban Economics, 2010, vol. 67, issue 2, 206-218

Abstract: This paper develops and tests a model where cities play an important role as marriage markets. The idea is simple. Cities are dense areas where singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. To enjoy those benefits, they are willing to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the benefits from meeting more potential partners vanish and married couples move out of the city. Attractive singles benefit most from a dense market and are therefore more likely to move to the city. Those predictions are tested and confirmed with a unique Danish data set.

Keywords: Search; frictions; Marriage; market; Composition; of; cities (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2010
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (55)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0094-1190(09)00061-8
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:juecon:v:67:y:2010:i:2:p:206-218

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Urban Economics is currently edited by S.S. Rosenthal and W.C. Strange

More articles in Journal of Urban Economics from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu (repec@elsevier.com).