A New Estimator of Search Duration and Its Application to the Marriage Market
提出一种新的计量方法估计婚姻搜索持续时间，发现美国数据中女性初婚年龄与男性收入不平等及教育水平的正相关并非由搜索时间延长导致。
Abstract It is well known that female age at first marriage positively correlates with male income inequality. The common interpretation of this fact is that marital search takes longer when the pool of potential mates is more unequal. This paper challenges that interpretation with a novel econometric method. I utilize the fact that the female age at first marriage was shown to be a sum of a skewed term, possibly related to search, and a normally distributed residual. I estimate search duration as the expected skewed term. I find that in the American data this term does not positively correlate with male income inequality and female education.