Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/96708 
Year of Publication: 
2014
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 8070
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
We develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption patterns. We start by defining a revealed preference characterization of efficient household consumption when the marriage is stable. In particular, stability means that the marriage matching is individually rational and has no blocking pairs. We show that this revealed preference characterization generates testable conditions even if there is only a single consumption observation per household and individual preferences are heterogeneous across households. In addition, the characterization allows for identifying the intrahousehold decision structure (including the sharing rule) under the same minimalistic assumptions. An application to Dutch household data demonstrates the empirical usefulness of our theoretical results.
Subjects: 
marriage market
stable matching
Pareto efficient household consumption
testable implications
sharing rule identification
preference heterogeneity
JEL: 
C14
D11
C78
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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