allowing for dynamics in the response of divorce rates to the adoption of unilateral divorce laws. We in turn explore the … extremely fragile. We conclude first that the impact of unilateral divorce laws remains unclear. Second, extending Wolfers …

Divorce law changes made in the 1970s affected marital formation, dissolution, and bargaining within marriage. By … labor force. Whereas earlier work had suggested that the impact of unilateral divorce on female employment depended … controls. I find instead that unilateral divorce led to an increase in both married and unmarried female labor force …

This paper revisits the evidence on the impact of unilateral divorce laws on divorce rates in the United States. Most … states switched from requiring mutual consent to allowing unilateral or no-fault divorce between 1970 and 1985, while the … national divorce rate more than doubled after 1965. According to the Coase theorem, however, the legal shift should have had no …

Application of the Coase Theorem to marital bargaining suggests that shifting from a consent divorce regime to no …-fault unilateral divorce laws should not affect divorce rates. Each iteration of the empirical literature examining the evolution of … divorce rates across US states has yielded different conclusions about the effects of divorce law liberalization. I show that …

During the 1970s the US underwent an important change in its divorce laws, switching from mutual consent to a … unilateral divorce regime. Who benefitted and who lost from this change? To answer this question we develop a dynamic life …-cycle model in which agents make consumption, saving, labor force participation (LFP), and marriage and divorce decisions subject …

Over the past thirty years changes in divorce law have significantly increased access to divorce. The different timing … of divorce law reform across states provides a useful quasi-experiment with which to examine the effects of this change … change in divorce law. Suicide rates are used as a quantifiable measure of wellbeing, albeit one that focuses on the extreme …

Most states in the U.S. allow for unilateral divorce, which increases the ease of divorce by not requiring the explicit … stability and resulting child outcomes, but there is no evidence to date to support the contention that easier divorce … regulations are actually bad for children. I assess the long run implications for children of growing up in a unilateral divorce …

to ten years, are more likely to delay divorce to the tenth year relative to a control group. We find that vulnerable … couples are slightly more likely to delay divorce from year nine to year ten; however, the effect is statistically … concerns, it does not appear to distort incentives for divorce …