‘The Economics of the Marriage Contract: Theories and Evidence,’ by Niko Matouschek and Imran Rasul
Marriage is a natural subject for law & economics scholars. From Gary Becker’s “A Treatise on the Family” (1981) to Margaret Brinig’s “From Contract to Covenant” (2000), scholars have expanded our understanding of romantic love by examining it through an economic lens.
Some object that bringing law & economics into marriage risks coarsening and cheapening this fundamental institution. That concern is noble, but it overlooks history and mistakes scholarship for advice. Marriage’s deep association with romantic love is itself partly the result of a legal change: the medieval church’s adoption of dispositive spousal consent, under which the spouses’ consent determined whether a marriage was valid (Berman 1985, Piano and Piano 2025). Far from being removed from legal analysis and price theory, marriage’s beauty and complexity cannot be fully appreciated without these tools.
Although most couples view marriage as more than a contract, it is at least a contract with both economic and legal purposes. Saying that marriage has an economic purpose does not mean that it maximizes wealth, although it usually does. It means that marriage solves coordination problems between two people.
Likewise, saying that marriage has a legal purpose does not mean that the state must regulate it, although it usually does. It means that marriage solves coordination problems between the couple and the rest of society. In “The Economics of the Marriage Contract: Theories and Evidence” (2008), Niko Matouschek and Imran Rasul ask: What exactly are the coordination problems that the marriage contract solves?