This paper examines how divorce laws affect couples' intertemporal choices and well-being. Exploiting panel variation in US laws, I estimate the parameters of a model of household decision-making. Household survey data indicate that the introduction of unilateral divorce in states that imposed an equal division of property is associated with higher household savings and lower female employment, implying a distortion in household assets accumulation and a transfer toward wives whose share in household resources is smaller than the one of their husband. When spouses share consumption equally, separate property or prenuptial agreements can reduce distortions and increase equity.

We examine women’s household power in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs), synthesizing theoretical frameworks and empirical evidence on its measurement, determinants, and consequences. We define women’s household power as their influence over household choices, distinguishing it from broader empowerment concepts. We review economic models, including unitary, collective, and bargaining frameworks, and map these to empirical approaches. We then discuss measurement methods, such as structural estimation of consumption allocation, survey measures, and laboratory experiments. On the determinants of women’s power, we find that some approaches, such as transfers targeted to women, show mixed results, while others, such as increasing women’s control over their earnings, show clearer positive impacts. On the effects of women’s power, we pay special attention to children’s human capital. Few studies provide strong evidence that mothers invest more in children than fathers do, but collectively the evidence suggests such an effect. We conclude by highlighting research and methodological gaps.

Compulsory licensing allows firms in developing countries to produce foreign-owned inventions without the consent of foreign patent owners. This paper uses an exogenous event of compulsory licensing after World War I under the Trading with the Enemy Act to examine the effects of compulsory licensing on domestic invention. Difference-in-differences analyses of nearly 130,000 chemical inventions suggest that compulsory licensing increased domestic invention by 20 percent.

While men and women make joint decisions about fertility, women give birth and are more likely to learn about a significant cost of childbearing—maternal health risk. Within couples in Zambia, men have systematically lower awareness of maternal risk factors and higher desire for children than their wives. We develop a model in which information asymmetries between partners over maternal health risk can persist in equilibrium due to strategic incentives and can generate disagreement over fertility that cannot be resolved with transfers. To study the effect of communication barriers on fertility, we design an experiment that varies whether the husband or the wife receives information about maternal health risk. One year after the intervention, men told about such risk exhibit significant gains in knowledge, report lower demand for children, and communicate this information to their wives, who also update their beliefs. Pregnancy falls significantly, while transfers remain unchanged relative to the control group. Meanwhile, when women are told about risk, they update their beliefs, but fail to transmit the information to their husbands, who do not change their demand for children. While pregnancy also falls among these couples, the decline is accompanied by a significant reduction in transfers and support to the wife. When childbearing costs, particularly those borne by one party, cannot be easily communicated within the household, targeting information can help overcome asymmetries and improve household decision-making.

We document an important consequence of bride price, a payment made by the groom to the bride’s family at marriage. Revisiting Indonesia’s school construction program, we find that among ethnic groups without the custom, it had no effect on girls’ schooling. Among ethnic groups with the custom, it had large positive effects. We show (theoretically and empirically) that this is because a daughter’s education, by increasing the amount of money parents receive at marriage, generates an additional incentive for parents to educate their daughters. We replicate these findings in Zambia, a country that had a similar large-scale school construction program.

This paper uses newly collected data on the allocation of dowry to examine its role in resolving intergenerational frictions around migration in India. Migration disrupts traditional elderly support structures, in which sons live near their parents and care for them in old age. We develop a model in which dowry can promote migration by allowing sons to make upfront transfers to their parents and ease constraints on income sharing. To test this hypothesis, we collect two new data sets that measure the distribution of dowry between family members. We document for the first time that net transfers of dowry to a man’s parents are common but far from universal. Consistent with using dowry for income sharing, such transfers occur more often when sons migrate, especially when they work in higher-earning occupations. In nationally representative data, migration rates are higher in areas with stronger historical dowry traditions. Finally, exploiting a large-scale highway construction program, we show that men from areas with stronger historical dowry traditions migrate more when migration costs fall. Our findings provide some clues as to why dowry persists despite its well-documented adverse consequences.