Assortative Matching at the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World's Most Exclusive Marriage Market
- (pp. 445-87)
Abstract
Using novel data on peerage marriages in Britain, I find that low search costs and marriage-market segregation can generate sorting. Peers courted in the London Season, a matching technology introducing aristocratic bachelors to debutantes. When Queen Victoria went into mourning for her husband, the Season was interrupted (1861–1863), raising search costs and reducing market segregation. I exploit exogenous variation in women's probability to marry during the interruption from their age in 1861. The interruption increased peer-commoner intermarriage by 40 percent and reduced sorting along landed wealth by 30 percent. Eventually, this reduced peers' political power and affected public policy in late nineteenth-century England.Citation
Goñi, Marc. 2022. "Assortative Matching at the Top of the Distribution: Evidence from the World's Most Exclusive Marriage Market." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 14 (3): 445-87. DOI: 10.1257/app.20180463Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- C78 Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
- D83 Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
- J12 Marriage; Marital Dissolution; Family Structure; Domestic Abuse
- J16 Economics of Gender; Non-labor Discrimination
- N33 Economic History: Labor and Consumers, Demography, Education, Health, Welfare, Income, Wealth, Religion, and Philanthropy: Europe: Pre-1913
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