Is Marriage as Good as a Contract?

Alessandro Cigno

No 4555, CESifo Working Paper Series from CESifo

Abstract: Neither marriage nor a legally enforceable contract serves any useful purpose if the parties have access to a perfect credit market. In the presence of credit rationing, efficiency and utility equalization are guaranteed only by a legally enforceable contract. Separate-property marriage may reduce and community-property marriage actually eliminate inefficiency, but neither of them guarantees utility equalization.

Keywords: contracts; hold-up problem; separate-property marriage; community-property marriage; divorce legislation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 J12 K36 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2013
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Related works:
Journal Article: Is Marriage as Good as a Contract? (2014)
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