DIVORCE LAW REFORMS AND DIVORCE RATES IN THE USA: AN INTERACTIVE FIXED‐EFFECTS APPROACH

Dukpa Kim () and Tatsushi Oka

Journal of Applied Econometrics, 2014, vol. 29, issue 2, 231-245

Abstract: SUMMARY This paper estimates the effects of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates in the USA from a panel of state‐level divorce rates. We use the interactive fixed‐effects model to address the issue of endogeneity due to the association between cross‐state unobserved heterogeneity and divorce law reforms. We document that earlier studies in the literature do not fully control for unobserved heterogeneity and result in mixed empirical evidence on the effects of divorce law reforms. While reconciling these conflicting results, our results suggest that divorce law reforms have temporal positive effects on divorce rates, thus confirming the 2006 findings of Wolfers. Via simulation experiments, we assess the degree to which faulty inclusion or faulty exclusion of interactive fixed effects affects the policy effect estimators. Our results suggest that faulty inclusion only results in efficiency loss whereas faulty exclusion causes bias. Copyright © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Date: 2014
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (48)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/

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:wly:japmet:v:29:y:2014:i:2:p:231-245

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www3.intersci ... e.jsp?issn=0883-7252

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Applied Econometrics is currently edited by M. Hashem Pesaran

More articles in Journal of Applied Econometrics from John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().