This paper hypothesizes that the quit propensity of married men rises with an increase in their wives' income. Assuming that individuals are risk averse and that quitting is risky, the wife's income increases the husband's expected value of quitting by reducing the variance of expected family income. Using the longitudinal data from the Michigan Panel Study of Income Dynamics (PSID), the wife's income is found to have a large effect on quits. The average husband's quit rate increases by about 45% when the wife's income rises from zero to two-thirds that of the husband's. The wife's income effect nearly offsets the negative effect that marriage typically has on male quit rates.

We hypothesize that past strike experience will have a negative or "teetotaler" effect on a collective bargaining unit's propensity to strike in future negotiations, other things being equal. We test this using a unique micro-level sample comprising four consecutive negotiations by 147 bargaining units in U.S. manufacturing industries, controlling for observable and unobservable differences among bargaining pairs in the propensity to strike. Our results are consistent with the view that the experience of striking is, indeed, sobering: lagged strike experience variables have a significantly negative effect on the propensity to strike in the current negotiation.