Young Labour Economist Prize 2008
EALE has instituted a Young Economists Award for the best
single authored paper presented at the annual conference by an economist who
completed his or her PhD no longer than three years ago. The prize is Euro
300.
Prize 2008, Amsterdam Conference
The prize committee,
including Alison Booth, Bertil Holmlund and Steve Machin, considered a
number of excellent submitted papers. The ranking was done independently by
the committee members and they all arrived at the same selection of the best
paper, namely
Martin Halla
(University of Linz and IZA)
The Effect of Joint Custody on
Marriage and Divorce
Abstract: Since the 1970s nearly all US-states have introduced a form of
joint custody after divorce. We analyze the causal effect of this custody
law reform on the incidence of marriage and divorce. Our identification
strategy exploits the different timing of reform across states and the
control group of divorcing couples without minors. Estimations based on
state panel data suggest that the introduction of joint custody led to a
long-run increase in marriage rates. There is no convincing evidence for an
impact of joint custody on divorce rates. In sum, joint custody has
increased the stock of married people and dampened the persistent downturn
in marriage, which can be observed over the last thirty years.
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