Marriage and the City

C. N. Teulings (), Pieter Gautier and Michael Svarer ()

No 4939, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Do people move to cities because of marriage market considerations? In cities singles can meet more potential partners than in rural areas. Singles are therefore prepared to pay a premium in terms of higher housing prices. Once married, the marriage market benefits disappear while the housing premium remains. We extend the model of Burdett and Coles (1997) with a distinction between efficient (cities) and less efficient (non-cities) search markets. One implication of the model is that singles are more likely to move from rural areas to cities while married couples are more likely to make the reverse movement. A second prediction of the model is that attractive singles benefit most from a dense market (i.e. from being choosy). Those predictions are tested with a unique Danish dataset.

Keywords: Marriage; Search; Mobility; City (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J12 J64 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005-03
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-geo and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (17)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4939 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: Marriage and the City (2005)
Working Paper: Marriage and the City (2005)
Working Paper: Marriage and the City (2005)
Working Paper: Marriage and the City (2005)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:4939

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP4939

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().