This paper formulates a model to examine the effects of changes in tax-benefit policy on the behavior of divorced parents and the well-being of children in single-parent households. Noncustodial parents choose the level of a child support payment to transfer to custodians. These, in turn, decide...

This article develops a simple model of household decisions that explicitly accounts for the role played by the Working Families’Tax Credit (WFTC) to examine its effects on couples in Britain. The main implications of the model are tested using panel data from the British Household Panel...

This paper empirically examines social network explanations for migration decisions in the context of German reunification. Using longitudinal data from the German Socio-Economic Panel, we first show that the presence of a family in West Germany is an important predictor for the migration hazard...

We conduct a cross-national econometric analysis of intra-family location and caregiving patterns. Using European data, we first assess, from an international perspective, the relationship between family structure and the geographic proximity between adult children and their parents. We then...

This paper formulates a model to explain how parental care responsibilities and family structure interact in affecting children’s mobility characteristics. Our main result is that the mobility of young adults crucially depends on the presence of a sibling. Siblings compete in location and...

We use an experiment to study the effect of ex-post sharing rules on relationship-specific investments in an incomplete contracting context. We find that no power structure can induce first-best investments and that equally productive partners reach more efficient outcomes with a balanced power...

We examine the relationship between assisted reproductive technologies (ART) and the microeconomics of fertility choice. Along the way, we develop a model consistent with between-country differences in overall fertility and fertility timing. Our analysis of ART centers around the distinction...

A successful marriage requires for both parties to make investments in their relationship and marital assets. How such assets would be divided if and when the parties divorce is an important factor determining each party’s ex ante investment incentives. Using the incomplete contracting...

We consider a repeated family bargaining model that links the topics of employment and households. A key aspect of the model is that marital bargaining power is determined endogenously. We show that: (1) the efficiency of household decisions is sometimes inversely related to the prevailing...

The paper explores the importance of unanticipated house price shocksfor marital dissolution in the UK by using individual household datafrom the British Household Panel Survey and county level house pricedata from the Halifax house price index. Results suggest that positiveand negative house...