Development and History
Development and Economic History
Members of the Development and Economic History Research Group combine archival data, lab-in-the-field experiments, randomized controlled trials, text analysis, survey and secondary data along with theoretical tools to study issues in development and economic history. Faculty and students work in the field in South Asia, China and Africa as well as doing archival work in libraries across Europe and Asia.
Almost all faculty are members of CAGE in the economics department and some are also members of Warwick Interdisciplinary Centre for International Development (WICID). There is a regular weekly external seminar, two weekly internal workshops, and high quality research students. We also organise international conferences on campus, or in Venice.
Our activities
Development and Economic History Research Group Workshop/Seminar
Monday: 1.00-2.00pm
For faculty and PhD students at Warwick and other top-level academic institutions across the world. For a detailed scheduled of speakers please follow the link below.
Organisers: Bishnupriya Gupta and Claudia Rei
People
Academics
Academics associated with the Development and Economic History Research Group are:
Research Students
Events
CWIP (CAGE Work in Progress) Workshop - Victor Lavy (Warwick)
Title: The Effect of Economic Inequality on Assortative Matching: The Formation and Dissolution of Marriages
Ran Abramitzky,[1] Netanel Ben-Porath,[2] and Victor Lavy.[3]
[1]Stanford University and the NBER.
[2] Northwestern University.
[3] Warwick University, The Hebrew University, NBER, and CEPR.
Abstract - The increase in assortative matching in marriage markets observed across many nations worldwide is a contributing factor to rising income inequality. This paper suggests that the causal chain also runs in reverse: deepening labor market inequality could trigger greater assortative matching in the marriage market. To establish causality, we study the Israeli kibbutzim that transitioned from equal sharing to market economies. A reform that followed a staggered adoption pattern across kibbutzim abolished egalitarian income sharing, generating inequalities by linking wages to education for the first time. This enabled us to conduct a series of difference-in-differences analyses to examine the impact of the reform on divorce and marriage patterns. First, we find that the rise in economic inequality led to divorce among couples with unequal education, but only when the wife was more educated than the husband. This finding is consistent with a violation of the norm that dictates the husband should be the primary breadwinner. Second, we find that the reform increased assortative matching in education, resulting in a significant reduction in educational differences among newly married couples. Importantly, we find that assortative matching existed in the kibbutzim even before liberalization, when earnings were not related to education. This suggests that assortative matching on education is driven not only by income but also by a preference for marrying a partner who is similarly educated. Overall, we conclude that assortative matching increased following the reform, both through the formation of new marriages and the selection of spouses, as well as the dissolution of existing marriages. These results demonstrate that increased labor-market inequality may increase inter-household inequality by boosting assortative matching in the marriage market.