A large exclusion from the labor market or an important unemployment of low-skilled workers is observed in some developed economies in which a minimum wage has been introduced. In such circumstances, governments may adopt two kinds of policies. They may pay unemployment benefits or they may try...

Stable matchings may fail to exist in the roommate matching problem, both when utility is transferable and when it is not. We show that when utility is transferable, the existence of a stable matching is restored when there is an even number of individuals of indistinguishable characteristics...

The extent to which like-with like marry is particularly important for inequality as well as for the outcomes of children that result from the union. In this paper we discuss approaches to the measurement of changes in assortative mating. We derive two key conditions that a well-defined measure...

We construct a matching model on the marriage market along more than one characteristic, where individuals have preferences over physical attractiveness (proxied by anthropometric characteristics) and market and household productivity of potential mates (proxied by socioeconomic...

We develop a matching model on the marriage market, where individuals have preferences over the smoking status of potential mates, and over their socioeconomic quality. Spousal smoking is bad for non-smokers, but it is neutral for smokers, while individuals always prefer high socioeconomic...

We analyze the interaction of race with physical and socioeconomic characteristics in the U.S. marriage market, using the Panel Study of Income Dynamics from 1999 to 2009 for black, white, and inter-racial couples. We consider the anthropometric characteristics of both spouses, together with...

We develop a two-sided matching model with positive sorting, divorce and remarriage. Match quality for each couple is revealed ex post and those with poor draws divorce. Competition determines lifetime expected utilities but per-period utilities depend on the laws that govern the distribution of...

Positive assortative matching refers to the tendency of individuals with similar characteristics to form partnerships. Measuring the extent to which assortative matching differs between two economies is challenging when the marginal distributions of the characteristic along which sorting takes...

We develop a collective household model with spousal matching in which there exists marital gains to assortative matching and marriage quality for each couple is revealed ex post. Changes in alimony laws are shown to affect existing couples and couples-to-be differently. For existing couples,...