FERTILITY SHOCKS AND EQUILIBRIUM MARRIAGE-RATE DYNAMICS

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Knowles, John; Vandenbroucke, Guillaume
• 署名单位: Simon Fraser University; Federal Reserve System - USA; Federal Reserve Bank - St. Louis
• 刊物名称: INTERNATIONAL ECONOMIC REVIEW
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0020-6598
• DOI: 10.1111/iere.12395
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 1505-1537
• 关键词: Directed search; sex-ratio; WAR

摘要

Female marriage probabilities were 50% higher in France in the years after World War 1, despite a large drop in the sex ratio. We develop a model of marital matching in which composition effects in the singles pool affect postdisruption matching rates. When calibrated to French data from World War 1, this mechanism explains 2/3 of the postwar rise in female marriage probabilities as the result of better composition of the pool of single men. We conclude that endogeneity issues make the sex ratio a potentially unreliable indicator of female marriage prospects.