American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 6 2017

Household Consumption When the Marriage Is Stable

Laurens Cherchye¹; Thomas Demuynck²; Bram De Rock³; Frederic Vermeulen⁴

¹ Department of Economics, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), E. Sabbelaan 53, B-8500 Kortrijk, Belgium (e-mail: ) · ² ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F. D. Roosevelt 50, CP 114, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium, and Maastricht University (e-mail: ) · ³ ECARES, Université Libre de Bruxelles, Avenue F. D. Roosevelt 50, CP 114, B-1050 Brussels, Belgium, and Department of Economics, University of Leuven (KU Leuven) (e-mail: ) · ⁴ Department of Economics, University of Leuven (KU Leuven), Naamsestraat 69, B-3000, Leuven, Belgium (e-mail: )

Abstract

We develop a novel framework to analyze the structural implications of the marriage market for household consumption. We define a revealed preference characterization of efficient household consumption when the marriage is stable. We characterize stable marriage with intrahousehold (consumption) transfers but without assuming transferable utility. Our revealed preference characterization generates testable conditions even with a single observation per household and heterogeneous individual preferences across households. The characterization also allows for identifying the intrahousehold decision structure (including the sharing rule) under the same minimalistic assumptions. An application to Dutch household data illustrates the usefulness of our theoretical results.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20151413

Volume

107

Issue

6

Pages

1507-1534

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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