Muslim Family Law, Prenuptial Agreements, and the Emergence of Dowry in Bangladesh
研究孟加拉国嫁妆水平变化，发现传统伊斯兰聘礼（mehr）作为婚姻合同制度因素被忽视，模型显示法律变化影响嫁妆和聘礼水平。
We explain trends in dowry levels in Bangladesh by drawing attention to an institutional feature of marriage contracts previously ignored in the literature: mehr or traditional Islamic bride-price. We develop a model of marriage contracts in which mehr serves as a barrier to husbands exiting marriage and a component of dowry as an amount that ex ante compensates the groom for the cost of mehr. We investigate how mehr and dowry respond to exogenous changes in the costs of polygamy and divorce, and show that our model gives a different set of predictions than traditional models. We show that major changes in dowry levels took place precisely after the legal changes, corresponding to simultaneous changes in levels of mehr. (c) 2010 by the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology..