Marriage market and intra-household allocation : essays in economics of family and education.

Summary This thesis studies family formation, family organization, and parenting systems. The first two chapters deal with spousal choice and resource sharing within the couple. I first model how individuals meet and decide whether or not to pair up based on their education, income, and physical appearance. I use U.S. data where I observe who is married to whom and for how long, allowing me to identify individuals' preferences. The second chapter analyzes the effects of marriage on certain economic trends such as income inequality or labor supply. In this chapter, people in a couple share their income and choose together the best organization for working and performing domestic tasks and raising children. Using British data, I identify the income transfers that exist between men and women and show that these transfers increase the work of married men and decrease the work of married women. The last two chapters study the efficiency of the French college and in particular the practice of repeating grades. The third chapter uses decomposition methods to assess the extent to which the decline in French students' PISA scores can be attributed to changes in student characteristics or to changes in the returns to education. Finally, the last chapter focuses specifically on repetition and uses panel data on French middle school students to assess the impact of repetition on their scores.