"A Good Man is Hard to Find: Marriage as an Institution"
BY: RUSSELL D. MURPHY, JR.
Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Department of Economics
Document: Available from the SSRN Electronic Paper Collection:
http://papers.ssrn.com/paper.taf?abstract_id=172189
Paper ID: Virginia Tech Working Paper No. E98-02
Date: July 19, 1999
Contact: RUSSELL D. MURPHY, JR.
Email: Mailto:rdmurphy at vt.edu
Postal: Virginia Polytechnic Institute & State University
Department of Economics
Blacksburg, VA 24061
Phone: 540-231-4537
ABSTRACT:
This paper develops a model of marriage as an institution that
changes the incentives of a mating game between men and women.
Unlike other models of the family, decisions to invest in
children are not contractible ex-ante, but must be sub-game
perfect given that intimacy and pregnancy are sequential.
Marriage and divorce, which are publicly observable, create
costs for exiting a match; informal relationships do not.
Providing an institution which makes a match
observable--marriage--improves incentives for men to invest
costly unobservable effort in their children.
The model accounts for several stylized facts about marriage,
including better outcomes, on average, for children within
marriage, and women's preferences for marriage over informal
relationships. It also suggests why societies may impose costs
for divorce and out-of-wedlock child bearing; the penalties can
increase the average welfare of children. The model highlights
the tensions surrounding these policies. Exogenous penalties are
not Pareto-improving, even among the young; some children are
strictly worse off with higher penalties even if the aggregate
welfare of children increases.
JEL Classification: J12, J13