Three essays on family economics and economic history

This thesis explores three topics in the areas of family economics and economic history. The first chapter provides a theoretical rationale for why unmarried cohabitation in the United States is especially common among noncollege-educated individuals. In the life-cycle model of partnership formation and dissolution, cohabitation can be both an investment good, useful to learn about the quality of prospective marriage partners, and a consumption good, namely a cheap substitute to marriage. A structural estimation of this model highlights the role of labor market earnings. Their composition accounts for most of the differential likelihood to cohabit and to marry of people with different education levels, by influencing their demand for commitment. The second chapter, co-authored with David de la Croix, focuses on the effect of the Catholic Church’s censorship of books on the demise of knowledge production in early modern Italy. The evolution of knowledge quality of censored and non-censored authors is used to identify the deep parameters of a model linking censorship to knowledge diffusion and occupational choice. The conclusion is that censorship reduced by 27% the average log publication per scholar in Italy. The third chapter, co-authored with Egor Kozlov, focuses on the role of unilateral divorce in the rise of unmarried cohabitation. The fact that cohabitation increased when unilateral divorce was introduced is analyzed through the lenses of a life-cycle model with partnership choice, endogenous divorce/breakup, female labor force participation, and saving decisions. A structural estimation that matches the empirical findings suggests that unilateral divorce decreases the marriage gains that derive from cooperation and risk-sharing. This makes cohabitation preferred among couples that would have likely faced a divorce, which is more expensive than breaking up. As cohabiting couples formed after the reform are better matched, the average length of cohabitations increases by 27%.