A New Estimator of Search Duration and Its Application to the Marriage Market

authored by

Pavel Jelnov

Abstract

It is well known that female age at first marriage positively correlates with male income inequality. The common interpretation of this fact is that marital search takes longer when the pool of potential mates is more unequal. This paper challenges that interpretation with a novel econometric method. I utilize the fact that the female age at first marriage was shown to be a sum of a skewed term, possibly related to search, and a normally distributed residual. I estimate search duration as the expected skewed term. I find that in the American data this term does not positively correlate with male income inequality and female education.

Organisation(s)

Institute of Labour Economics

External Organisation(s)

Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Type

Article

Journal

Oxford Bulletin of Economics and Statistics

Volume

80

Pages

1089-1116

No. of pages

28

ISSN

0305-9049

Publication date

12.2018

Publication status

Published

Peer reviewed

Yes

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Statistics and Probability, Social Sciences (miscellaneous), Economics and Econometrics, Statistics, Probability and Uncertainty

Sustainable Development Goals

SDG 10 - Reduced Inequalities

Electronic version(s)

https://doi.org/10.1111/obes.12248 (Access: Open)