To analyze the impact of changes in the value of marriage on household decisions, we present a limited commitment framework of household behavior in which decisions are made regarding labor supply, divorce and housing demand over the lifecycle. We identify and estimate our structural model using exogenous variation in female labor supply and divorce rates due to the White v. White case in England. We conclude that limited commitment dampens the added worker effect, while the changes in the value of marriage due to a housing price shock have an asymmetric impact on individual welfare both across gender and marital state. We also show that tightening the credit market in different ways can lead to opposite behavior in terms of household savings and female labor supply.

We develop an empirical framework to analyze the dynamic effect of personality traits in marriage market patterns and intrahousehold decisions. We exploit detailed information at the individual level from the HILDA survey about consumption, labor supply, time use, and personality traits (as measured by the Big Five). First, we document that personality types are related to marital and divorce patterns, time allocated to both market labor and non-market labor activities, and the evolution of earnings. Next, to rationalize these empirical facts, we build a life-cycle model that integrates endogenous household formation and collective household choices under limited commitment. Our framework allows personality to affect both wage offers and individual preferences. In the latter, personality traits enter indirectly through the intrahousehold production of public good and the utility of marriage (match quality). We use the estimates of our model to conduct policy counterfactuals associated with sorting in the marriage market and intrahousehold behavior. Gender differences in child care preferences, the marriage market, and gender inequality with Sarah Rosenberg https://sarahrosenbergcom.wordpress.com/

Standard collective models of household behavior assume that individuals hold accurate beliefs about marriage stability and, consequently, their insurance within the family unit. I test this assumption by comparing individuals' expectations about marital stability with objective benchmarks. First, I find that individuals have distorted beliefs about marital stability, with the majority being optimistic about their own divorce probabilities. Second, when presented with information about actual divorce rates, respondents do not update their beliefs about their own marital stability but adjust their intentions regarding fertility, career, and childcare arrangements. I propose that the mechanism behind this behavior is self-motivated beliefs and analyze its consequences for fertility decisions, parental careers, and individual insurance choices.