Seminar at Economics

SEMINAR AT CBS' DEPARTMENT OF ECONOMICS

Speaker: Michael Svarer, University of Århus.

Time:

Monday 3 April, 2006, 1 pm

Place:

Seminar room C5:04, Department of Economics, Copenhagen Business School

Title:  

Sin City

Abstract: 

In this paper we test with a unique Danish data set what the effects of various forms of commitments on marriage duration is. Besides considering the usual suspects like the effects of: being married as opposed to cohabiting, having young and older kids, and home ownership, we also consider the effects of voluntary decreasing the arrival rate of potential new partners. This has to our knowledge not been studied before. In Gautier et al. (2005) we argue that the city serves as a marriage market. The basic idea is that the rate at which singles meet potential partners is higher in the city either because of a size-of-the-market effect or because cities are more densely populated. Therefore, singles (in particular the most attractive ones) will exploit this and move to the city. Those predictions are confirmed by the data. Here, we argue that the same observation can justify that a transition from the city couples. By moving to the countryside, the number of outside offers decreases and hence the value of search, while married, decreases as well.

Please notice: the paper atteched is not quit finished yet!