Something Useful for the Weekend

29 August 2008 at 7:24 am Lasse Leave a comment

| Lasse Lien |

Maybe you’re going to a dinner party this weekend, and maybe you’re worrying that the conversation with the person (of the opposite sex) seated next to you is going to dry up. If so, O&M offers a solution. Read the paper whose abstract appears below beforehand, and just as conversation is starting to cool down, give a quick summary of it. That should bring the heat back up.

We examine why developed societies are monogamous while rich men throughout history have typically practiced polygyny. Wealth inequality naturally produces multiple wives for rich men in a standard model of the marriage market. However, we demonstrate that higher female inequality in the marriage market reduces polygyny. Moreover, we show that female inequality increases in the process of development as women are valued more for the quality of their children than for the quantity. Consequently, male inequality generates inequality in the number of wives per man in traditional societies, but manifests itself as inequality in the quality of wives in developed societies.

Another potential use of the paper is to give it to your spouse if he or she complaints too much. I.e. make the point that if you are low quality, then he or she is likely to be low quality too, so he or she would be better off praising you.

The full reference is: Gould, Eric D., Omer Moav, and Avi Simhon. 2008. “The Mystery of Monogamy,” American Economic Review, 98(1): 333–57. The paper can be found here.