Dowry and Intrahousehold Bargaining
利用嫁妆作为议价能力的代理变量，并借助工具变量解决内生性问题，发现嫁妆能显著提升妻子在家庭中的福利，包括时间分配、购买决策和决策权，支持了集体家庭模型。
This paper analyzes the relationship between a woman’s intrahousehold bargaining position and her welfare within marriage. Simultaneity problems common to the literature are overcome by using dowry to proxy for bargaining position. Omitted variable bias is addressed by using grain shocks in the year preceding marriage and sibling sex composition as instruments for dowry. Instrumented dowry positively impacts several measures of a wife’s welfare, including time allocation, household purchases, and the wife’s decision-making authority, thereby offering strong evidence to support collective models of the household.