{"title":"'Til Dowry Do Us Part: Bargaining and Violence in Indian Families","authors":"Rossella Calvi, Ajinkya Keskar","doi":"10.1162/rest_a_01399","DOIUrl":null,"url":null,"abstract":"We develop a non-cooperative bargaining model with incomplete information linking dowry payments, domestic violence, resource allocation between a husband and a wife, and separation. Our model generates several predictions, which we test empirically using amendments to the Indian anti-dowry law as a natural experiment. We document a decline in women's bargaining power and separations, and a surge in domestic violence following the amendments. These unintended effects are attenuated when social stigma against separation is low and, in some circumstances, when gains from marriage are high. Whenever possible, parents increase investment in their daughters' human capital to compensate for lower dowries.","PeriodicalId":48456,"journal":{"name":"Review of Economics and Statistics","volume":null,"pages":null},"PeriodicalIF":7.6000,"publicationDate":"2023-11-29","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":"0","resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":null,"PeriodicalName":"Review of Economics and Statistics","FirstCategoryId":"96","ListUrlMain":"https://doi.org/10.1162/rest_a_01399","RegionNum":1,"RegionCategory":"经济学","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":null,"EPubDate":"","PubModel":"","JCR":"Q1","JCRName":"ECONOMICS","Score":null,"Total":0}
引用次数: 0
Abstract
We develop a non-cooperative bargaining model with incomplete information linking dowry payments, domestic violence, resource allocation between a husband and a wife, and separation. Our model generates several predictions, which we test empirically using amendments to the Indian anti-dowry law as a natural experiment. We document a decline in women's bargaining power and separations, and a surge in domestic violence following the amendments. These unintended effects are attenuated when social stigma against separation is low and, in some circumstances, when gains from marriage are high. Whenever possible, parents increase investment in their daughters' human capital to compensate for lower dowries.
期刊介绍:
The Review of Economics and Statistics is a 100-year-old general journal of applied (especially quantitative) economics. Edited at the Harvard Kennedy School, the Review has published some of the most important articles in empirical economics.