Stable marriage, household consumption and unobserved match quality

Bram De Rock, Martin Browning, Laurens Cherchye, Thomas Demuynck and Frederic Vermeulen

No 16483, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: We present a methodology for the structural empirical analysis of household consumption and time use behaviour under marital stability. Our approach is of the revealed preference type and non-parametric, meaning that it does not require a prior functional specification of individual utilities. Without making use of the transferable utility assumption, but still allowing for monetary transfers, our method can identify individuals’ unobserved match qualities and quantify them in money metric terms. We can include both preference factors, affecting individuals’ preferences over private and public goods, and match quality factors, driving differences in unobserved match quality. We demonstrate the practical usefulness of our methodology through an application to the Belgian MEqIn data. Our results reveal intuitive patterns of unobserved match quality that allow us to rationalise both the observed matches and the within-household allocations of time and money.

Keywords: Household consumption; Marital stability; Unobserved match quality; Revealed preference analysis; Intrahousehold allocation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C14 C78 D11 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-08
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16483 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Stable Marriage, Household Consumption and Unobserved Match Quality (2021)
Working Paper: Stable marriage, household consumption and unobserved match quality (2021)
Working Paper: Stable marriage, household consumption and unobserved match quality (2021)
Working Paper: Stable Marriage, Household Consumption and Unobserved Match Quality (2021)
Working Paper: Stable marriage, household consumption and unobserved match quality (2021)
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:cpr:ceprdp:16483

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP16483

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().