Education, matching, and the allocative value of Romance

Alison Booth*, Melvyn Coles

*Corresponding author for this work

    Research output: Contribution to journalArticlepeer-review

    9 Citations (Scopus)

    Abstract

    Societies are characterized by customs governing the allocation of non-market goods such as marital partnerships. We explore how such customs affect the educational investment decisions of young singles and the subsequent joint labor supply decisions of partnered couples. We consider two separate matching paradigms-one where partners marry for money and the other where partners marry for romantic reasons orthogonal to productivity or debt. Whereas marrying for money generates greater investment efficiency, romantic matching, by increasing the number of educated and talented women who participate in the labour market, increases aggregate productivity. (JEL: I21, J12, J16, J41).

    Original languageEnglish
    Pages (from-to)744-775
    Number of pages32
    JournalJournal of the European Economic Association
    Volume8
    Issue number4
    DOIs
    Publication statusPublished - Jun 2010

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