Abstract
This paper constructs an economic model to study the emergence of marriage based on a new infra-marginal general equilibrium analysis. By depicting the commonness and complementarity of marriage, we explain how a single person shifts from being single to being married based on the division of labor. Meanwhile, reduced learning costs will make an individual more willing to abandon the single status, and the number of families in the marriage market will increase. The model reveals the necessary conditions for the existence of marriage and marital stability and explains the dynamic changes in the relative population and the prices of parties in the marriage market.
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Notes
The transaction costs include material investments, learning costs and search costs.
This paper conducts the model to explain the essence of marriage, which has been general issues. We not only focus on China’s marriage phenomenon, but also other countries.
The transaction cost the must parameters in the infra-marginal analysis model not just the marriage, but it is important to consider it in the marriage model. While the other three factors are mainly for the nature of marriage.
In this paper, the attraction parameter is equal to the similarity of the two parties as the influential factor.
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Liu, TY., Chang, HL. & Su, CW. Why do People Get Married? An Inframarginal Perspective. Soc Indic Res 130, 1281–1295 (2017). https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1232-6
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s11205-016-1232-6