Marriage and the value of waiting

Frank Strobel

Journal of Population Economics, 2003, vol. 16, issue 3, 423-430

Abstract: Using a simple model where singles try to maximize their “pizazz”, we examine the value of the option to give up single life in favor of marriage when singles’ pizazz levels follow correlated geometric Brownian motions. We derive the critical level of relative pizazz levels that triggers the move to marriage and find that for relatively small (large) potential economies of scale in marriage, a single will generally be willing to get married if his/her prospective partner’s pizazz is strictly higher (lower) than his/her own. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2003

Keywords: Marriage; option; J1 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2003
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (4)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00148-003-0110-0 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

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:spr:jopoec:v:16:y:2003:i:3:p:423-430

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-003-0110-0

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().