Marion Goussé

Marriage Gains: Who Should You Marry ?

This paper proposes a general equilibrium approach to examine the marriage market and within-household transfers. Using observations on who matches with whom, I derive information on how efficiently the market functions and on agents preferences in terms of mate choice. I use a multidimensional search and matching model which allows people to choose their partner according to their education level, their wage and their physical attractiveness. I first estimate a gender dependent unidimensional marriage index then I implement a multidimensional matching model to allow for complementarities in characteristics of partners. In both specifications, I find that wages are more important in mens attractiveness than in womens attractiveness whereas physical characteristics and education are more important for women. Some disparities exist across age groups. The weight of wage increases over the lifetime whereas the weights of education and physical attractiveness decrease. Besides, I find that the marriage market is more efficient for young individuals who are more selective. Finally, I compute the marriage gain and the within-household transfers and show that men get in average 56% of the surplus. I also look at the effects of taxation on matching patterns. I compare individual and joint taxation of the household gain and show that joint taxation slightly improves womens share of the surplus through less sorting on characteristics on the marriage market.

Marriage, Labor Supply, and Home Production: A Longitudinal Microeconomic Analysis of Marriage, Intra-Household Bargaining and Time Use Using the BHPS, 1991-2008

We extend the search-matching model of the marriage market of Shimer and Smith (2000) to allow for labor supply, home production, match-specific shocks and endogenous divorce. We study nonparametric identification using panel data on marital status, education, family values, wages, and market and non market hours, and we develop a semiparametric estimator. We estimate how much sorting results from time use specialization or homophilic preferences. We estimate how equilibrium marriage formation affects the wage elasticities of market and non market hours. We estimate individuals’ willingness to pay for marriage and quantify the redistributive effect of intra-household resource sharing.

Like Attract Like? A Structural Comparison of Homogamy Across Same-Sex and Different-Sex Households

In this paper, we extend Gary Becker’s empirical analysis of the marriage market to same-sex couples. We build an equilibrium model of the same-sex marriage market that allows for straightforward identification of the gains of marriage. We estimate the model with 2008–12 American Community Survey data on California and find that positive assortative mating is weaker for same-sex couples than for different-sex couples with respect to age and race. Positive assortative mating on education is stronger among female same-sex couples but comparable for male same-sex and different-sex couples. As regards labor market outcomes, our results suggest that specialization within the household mainly applies to different-sex couples.

Wage Dynamics and Peer Referrals

We present a flexible model of wage dynamics where information about job openings is transmitted through social networks. The model is based on Calvo-Armengol & Jackson (2004, 2007) and extends their results outside the stationary distribution, and under observed and unobserved heterogeneity. We present an empirical application using the British Household Panel Survey by exploiting direct information about individual’s social networks. We find that the distribution of job offers is positively affected by the employment status of an individual’s friends, and that this relationship is stronger for women.

Why Do Inequalities in 15-Year-Old Cognitive Skills Increased So Much in France?

In this paper, we analyse increasing inequalities in French students’ cognitive skills during the 2000 decade, as France is the European country that experienced the strongest rise in performance variance at PISA tests. In particular, French educational inequalities increased due to a decline in the low-achieving students’ performances. We exploit the excellent comparability of PISA scores in reading between 2000 and 2009 and estimate educational production functions in both years. Using semi-parametric quantile decompositions, we assign the difference in the distributions of reading proficiency scores to the different effects of students’ family, school and institutional characteristics. We find that two thirds of the decline in the 20% lowest-achieving students’ scores is related to the declining quality of the French educational system rather than to changes in students’ composition. Our results suggest that the recent reforms of French education policies directed toward disadvantaged students were not successful at improving their performances at school.