Some of the most important work in the development of economic theory is associated with the study of market structure. In essence, most markets are two-sided. For example, product markets connect tens of thousands of product brands to tens of millions of consumers; marriage markets couple the single men and women who would otherwise suffer from a lonely heart; and labour markets link the job candidates to their preferred employers and positions. Apart from the two-sidedness, we have explored another important common aspect of these market structures, i.e. interconnection/competition of the segments within one side of the market. Under this common thread, the three essays in this thesis are freshly formulated in a loosely related manner, covering topics in three different areas. Chapter 2 is motivated by strategic transitions of many marketplaces (e.g. Amazon.com). From the perspective of a platform owner, when it owns part of the business on one side of the market, there is no straightforward answer as to whether having the rest of business owned by others is advantageous or not. The argument is that, on the one hand, the platform welcomes more third-party business as it boosts revenue in terms of membership fees; on the other hand the business owned by the platform dislikes the incoming competitors whose participation drives down pro t margins. We propose a novel framework in this chapter to explore the trade-off between the two. Here, the intermediary can decide to be either a "merchant" or a "two-sided platform", or a hybrid one in between. Our analysis shows that in hybrid mode the platform extracts all the surplus from the producers of the merchandised brands, and the merchandised brands always charge a price premium compared to the directly retailed ones. We also show that as the platform absorbs an existing directly retailed brand into the self-brand portfolio, the equilibrium prices of both brand types are increased. We find that only the directly retailed brands dominate the market when the platform s capacity is relatively small; and both brand types coexist in the marketplace when the capacity is relatively large. Furthermore, we find a backward bending proportion plus a vertical proportion of the "contract curve" in comparative statics. That is, the self-brand portfolio always expands while the third-party-brand portfolio shrinks until it reaches a certain level, when the platform increases its capacity. It helps us to gain some ideas on the dynamics of brand portfolio management for the platform. Lastly, taking into account of indirect network effect which is the common feature in the two-sided market, it is shown that the platform is better o¤ when consumers have positive expected surplus. Chapter 3 is much motivated by the Chinese experience. China has witnessed the largest rural to urban labour ow (among which the majority are male) in the world s history over the last three decades. We propose an idea that the grand migration can also be attributed to the unbalanced sex ratio between rural and urban areas. This chapter develops a two-sided matching model of two linked marriage markets with homogeneous agents, non-transferable utility and search friction. We extend the one-market model of the previous literature into a two-market one, allowing the agents to migrate between the markets at a fixed cost. The analysis focuses on the unmatched as well as the migrating population, which is induced by the different sex ratios in the two geographically isolated marriage markets. We find that imperfections in the matching technology leads to the enlarged gap of sex ratio of the unmatched population compared to that of the unbalanced inflows. We are interested in the question of how the migrating costs affect the migration between rural and urban areas, and under what conditions a subsidy covering migrating costs might benefit a party in the marriage markets. We characterise the equilibrium set in the parameter space of migrating costs, and find that a full subsidy of migrating costs does not necessarily benefit those who receive it but always benefits the opposite sex, if they are the short sides of both markets. Chapter 4 explains the migration of labour force from a different angle. Here, the migration is of workers to jobs. Motivated by the distinction of public and private sector, we consider a spatial oligopsony model in which forms (two co-locating small firms with recruiting capacity constraints and a large firm without such limit) are competing for workers along a "strip" market. The capacity issue that is extensively discussed in the Chapter 2 again plays an important role in this model, though in a very different context. It is shown that the recruiting capacity affects the intra-group competition and hence the inter-group competition in wage- posting strategies. Additionally, we show that, as recruiting limits expand, the expected wages offered by the small firms increase while the wage offered by the big firm decreases, which helps to explain the recent trend of the wage disparity between public and private jobs. We also characterise the equilibrium wages and the size (direction) of the migration in the three-stage game (i.e. the workers decide whether to relocate in the first stage, then the big firm decides its wage offer, and lastly, the two co-locating firms simultaneous set wages), which helps us to understand better the inter-sector mobility in a changing environment of economy. We investigate the issues of interconnection and competition in three different markets. It is always of interest for a researcher of economics to have some ideas on the same issue from different perspectives. Remember that whilst this is a collection of essays on economic theory, it is nonetheless compared to empirical observation. And it will surely serve as a starting point for the author to further the research on market structure.

The paper deals with the issue of getting acquainted and looking for a partnership with the aid of new technologies. The main goal is to show the impact of new media on the mate selection and, above all, to describe the course of a particular way of getting acquainted which is new to the Czech society, that is speed dating. The so-called mediated dating services - online dating portals and speed dating - are assessed in a comparative way. The empirical part is based on the analysis of dating websites and dating agencies. KEYWORDS: speed dating, online dating portals, mediated dating, mate selection, marriage market

Essa dissertação de mestrado tem por objetivo perscrutar os valores atribuídos a relacionamentos afetivosexuais que se estabelecem através da mediação de sites de relacionamentos e agências de casamento entre homens do chamado primeiro mundo e mulheres do chamado terceiro mundo. Em particular, relacionamentos entre homens alemães e mulheres brasileiras. Tendo como pano de fundo as dinâmicas históricas e sociais que tornam relacionamentos desse tipo não apenas possíveis, mas também desejáveis, objetivo iluminar de que maneiras tais dinâmicas estariam implicadas na produção e reprodução do desejo e de interações tidas como íntimas, bem como essas dinâmicas mobilizariam noções de sexualidade e raça. Procuro, ademais, localizar o lugar ocupado pelas brasileiras nesse mercado internacional de fluxos matrimoniais e agências de casamento. Investigo ainda as motivações pessoais de indivíduos que fazem uso dessa forma de se buscar um/a parceiro/a compatível e questiono como relações mais amplas relativas a desigualdades de poder, gênero, raça e nacionalidade são pensadas nos processos de estabelecimento desses relacionamentos. / This dissertation aims to scrutinize the values attributed to affectivesexual relationships that are established through the mediation of dating websites and introduction agencies between men from the socalled \"first world\" and women from the socalled \"third world\". In particular, relationships between German men and Brazilian women. Taking in consideration the historical and social dynamics that make such relationships not only possible, but also desirable, I aim to shed light into how such dynamics are implicated in the production and reproduction of desire and of intimate interactions, as well as how such dynamics mobilize notions of race and sexuality. Furthermore, I seek to find the place occupied by Brazilian women in the market of international marriage flows and marriage agencies. I also investigate the personal motivations of individuals who make usage of these tools to find a suitable partner and question how wider power, gender, race and nationality inequalities are thought through in the processes of establishing these relationships.

Submitted by Luiza Gueller Zardin (luizazardin@gmail.com) on 2016-06-07T13:14:35Z No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_luiza_templatebmhs.pdf: 408467 bytes, checksum: 73263bbe753eda7c5a71fd95f23893b7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by GILSON ROCHA MIRANDA (gilson.miranda@fgv.br) on 2016-06-08T15:11:55Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_luiza_templatebmhs.pdf: 408467 bytes, checksum: 73263bbe753eda7c5a71fd95f23893b7 (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Marcia Bacha (marcia.bacha@fgv.br) on 2016-06-13T17:33:28Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_luiza_templatebmhs.pdf: 408467 bytes, checksum: 73263bbe753eda7c5a71fd95f23893b7 (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-06-13T17:35:54Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 dissertacao_luiza_templatebmhs.pdf: 408467 bytes, checksum: 73263bbe753eda7c5a71fd95f23893b7 (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-03-22 / We construct a frictionless matching model of the marriage market where women have bidimensional attributes, one continuous (income) and the other dichotomous (home ability). Equilibrium in the marriage market determines intrahousehold allocation of resources and female labor participation. Our model is able to predict partial non-assortative matching, with rich men marrying women with low income but high home ability. We then perform numerical exercises to evaluate the impacts of income taxes in individual welfare and find that there is considerable divergence in the female labor participation response to taxes between the short run and the long run.

Cette thèse étudie la formation des familles, leur organisation et les systèmes d’éducation. Les deux premiers chapitres traitent du choix du conjoint et du partage des ressources au sein du couple. Je modélise tout d’abord comment les individus se rencontrent et décident de se mettre en couple ou non en fonction de leur niveau d’éducation, de leur revenu et leur apparence physique. J’utilise des données américaines où j’observe qui est marié avec qui et pour combien de temps, ce qui me permet d’identifier les préférences des individus. Le deuxième chapitre analyse les effets du mariage sur certaines tendances économiques comme les inégalités de revenu ou les offres de travail. Dans ce chapitre, les personnes en couple se partagent leur revenu et choisissent ensemble la meilleure organisation pour travailler et accomplir les taches domestiques et élever les enfants. Avec des données britanniques, j’identifie les transferts de revenu qui existent entre les hommes et les femmes et je montre que ces transferts augmentent le travail des hommes mariés et diminuent celui des femmes mariées. Les deux derniers chapitres étudient l’efficacité du collège français et notamment la pratique du redoublement. Le troisième chapitre mobilise des méthodes de décomposition pour évaluer dans quelle mesure la baisse des scores des élèves français aux tests PISA peut être attribuée à des changements dans les caractéristiques des élèves ou à des changements dans les rendements de l’éducation. Enfin, le dernier chapitre se concentre particulièrement sur le redoublement et utilise des données de panel sur les collégiens français pour évaluer l’impact du redoublement sur leurs résultats. / This dissertation deals with family formation, family organization and education systems. The first two chapters study how people choose their partners and how they share their income. First, I focus on couple formation and I model how people meet and decide to match or not. People can choose their partner according to their education level, their wage and their physical attractiveness. Using American data, I observe who matches with whom and who stays single and for how long to recover the preferences of individuals in terms of mating. The second chapter attempts to understand how the efficiency and the sorting of the marriage market could impact economic outcomes such as income inequalities or labor supplies. In this chapter, when people marry, they share their income and decide how much each of them will work on the market and at home to raise children or do the housework. Using British data, I recover the amount of monetary transfers which exist between household members and show that these transfers make married women work less on the market and married men work more. The last two chapters of this dissertation focus on the French education system and on the impact of grade retention policies. In the third chapter I use decomposition methods to assess to which extent the decrease in French student’s score at PISA tests can be attributed to the changes in student’s characteristics or to the changes in school returns. Finally, in the last chapter, I use an estimation strategy to get rid of this selection effect and we use a panel data on French High School students to evaluate the impact of grade retention on their scores.

Essa dissertação de mestrado tem por objetivo perscrutar os valores atribuídos a relacionamentos afetivosexuais que se estabelecem através da mediação de sites de relacionamentos e agências de casamento entre homens do chamado primeiro mundo e mulheres do chamado terceiro mundo. Em particular, relacionamentos entre homens alemães e mulheres brasileiras. Tendo como pano de fundo as dinâmicas históricas e sociais que tornam relacionamentos desse tipo não apenas possíveis, mas também desejáveis, objetivo iluminar de que maneiras tais dinâmicas estariam implicadas na produção e reprodução do desejo e de interações tidas como íntimas, bem como essas dinâmicas mobilizariam noções de sexualidade e raça. Procuro, ademais, localizar o lugar ocupado pelas brasileiras nesse mercado internacional de fluxos matrimoniais e agências de casamento. Investigo ainda as motivações pessoais de indivíduos que fazem uso dessa forma de se buscar um/a parceiro/a compatível e questiono como relações mais amplas relativas a desigualdades de poder, gênero, raça e nacionalidade são pensadas nos processos de estabelecimento desses relacionamentos. / This dissertation aims to scrutinize the values attributed to affectivesexual relationships that are established through the mediation of dating websites and introduction agencies between men from the socalled \"first world\" and women from the socalled \"third world\". In particular, relationships between German men and Brazilian women. Taking in consideration the historical and social dynamics that make such relationships not only possible, but also desirable, I aim to shed light into how such dynamics are implicated in the production and reproduction of desire and of intimate interactions, as well as how such dynamics mobilize notions of race and sexuality. Furthermore, I seek to find the place occupied by Brazilian women in the market of international marriage flows and marriage agencies. I also investigate the personal motivations of individuals who make usage of these tools to find a suitable partner and question how wider power, gender, race and nationality inequalities are thought through in the processes of establishing these relationships.

This dissertation consists of four chapters on the economics of marriage and divorce in Iran. The first chapter outlines major forces driving the recent transitions in Iran's marriage market. Age structure of the population, the rise of women's education, marriage and divorce laws, and fertility decline are the four main forces influencing marriage transitions, that is, the age of marriage, couple's age and education gaps, quality of marriage (stability, education status of children), and women's power within marriage. Chapter two looks at the change in age structure that influences the sex ratio. I consider the influence of the sex ratio on couples' age and education gaps using data from multiple national surveys from 1984-2007. The findings of this chapter show that a lower sex ratio, i.e. a greater supply of marriage-age women, increases the bargaining power of men at the time of marriage and thereby increases their ability to marry younger and more educated women. In chapter three, I evaluate the effects of demographic change, the sex ratio, and policy change, particularly the provision of family planning programs through health clinics on delayed marriage in rural Iran. I use data from Iran's 2000 Demographic and Health Survey to estimate a hazard model of timing of marriage. The results show that a lower sex ratio decreases the chances of a woman finding a man five years older, and easier access to family planning decreases her probability of marriage. In chapter four, I provide a legal history of Iran's marriage and divorce laws and then discuss how changes in the legal structure of marriage and divorce alter the terms of marital bargaining and force women to circumvent inequitable Iranian laws to improve their position. Then, I present a model of how Mahrieh could improve a woman's position within the household in light of the unequal divorce rights favoring men. As women cannot exit their marriage, they request a conditional and legally enforceable bond known as Mahrieh from their husbands to secure themselves against the risks of divorce or maltreatment within marriage. / Ph. D.

Submitted by Lorena Hakak Marçal (lhakak@gmail.com) on 2016-07-15T01:32:34Z No. of bitstreams: 1 main_tese.pdf: 1165233 bytes, checksum: 3c715e88460a5637db424c8ffb2ac64b (MD5) / Rejected by Letícia Monteiro de Souza (leticia.dsouza@fgv.br), reason: Prezada Lorena, Favor alterar seu trabalho de acordo com as normas ABNT: 1: O nome Getulio não tem acento. Favor alterar de todas as páginas que constam o nome incorreto. 2: Capa, contra-capa e demais sessões devem estar em português, língua oficial da Fundação. 3: A numeração das páginas não deve aparecer até a Introdução, porém devem contabilizar desde a primeira página. Além disso, a paginação deve estar a direita da página. 4: O título das sessões Agradecimentos, Abstract e Resumo devem ser em fonte de tamanho 12, em caixa alta, negritado e centralizado. Atenciosamente, Letícia 3799-3631 on 2016-07-15T11:53:44Z (GMT) / Submitted by Lorena Hakak Marçal (lhakak@gmail.com) on 2016-07-15T17:39:58Z No. of bitstreams: 1 main_tese.pdf: 1164308 bytes, checksum: c13c0208ff92eb7996f56a8420fa7c53 (MD5) / Rejected by Letícia Monteiro de Souza (leticia.dsouza@fgv.br), reason: Prezada Lorena, Favor fazer a ultima alteração em seu trabalho para que possa ser aprovado: No cabeçalho, onde se encontra 'FUNDAÇÃO GETULIO VARGAS' Favor colocar "ESCOLA DE ECONOMIA DE SÃO PAULO", pois deve permanecer em português. Atenciosamente, Letícia Monteiro 3799-3631 on 2016-07-15T18:33:29Z (GMT) / Submitted by Lorena Hakak Marçal (lhakak@gmail.com) on 2016-07-15T20:34:11Z No. of bitstreams: 1 main_tese.pdf: 1164303 bytes, checksum: 064ad0fc52a52bcb5d49ae307cd0359b (MD5) / Approved for entry into archive by Letícia Monteiro de Souza (leticia.dsouza@fgv.br) on 2016-07-15T20:35:37Z (GMT) No. of bitstreams: 1 main_tese.pdf: 1164303 bytes, checksum: 064ad0fc52a52bcb5d49ae307cd0359b (MD5) / Made available in DSpace on 2016-07-15T20:43:19Z (GMT). No. of bitstreams: 1 main_tese.pdf: 1164303 bytes, checksum: 064ad0fc52a52bcb5d49ae307cd0359b (MD5) Previous issue date: 2016-06-20 / Society has changed in the past decades raising questions to be asked by social scientists and their impacts on family units. In this thesis we aim to analyze how agents’ decisions on marriage and education can be interconnected assuming that men and women have preferences for intra-group marriage. In our framework we find that preferences for intra-group marriage can increase the proportion of men and women who decide to get married and study. We also show that empirically for Brazilian data there is a positive assortative mating between people with same traits, such as, education, religion or race. In addition, married couples that share the same religion tend to have the same level of schooling. We investigate how changes in marital sorting, educational composition and returns to education that occurred in Brazil in the last years can impact in household income inequality. We calculate counterfactual scenarios for Gini Coefficient keeping one of these three variables fixed in one year and comparing the counterfactual values with the actual one. If marriage were formed randomly, the Gini Coefficient would be lower than the actual one. Keeping the returns to education fixed in year 2014 we also show that the counterfactual Gini would be lower than the actual one. / A sociedade mudou nas últimas décadas abrindo a possibilidade para cientistas sociais estudarem essas mudanças e analisar os seus impactos na unidade familiar. Nesta tese pretendemos analisar como as decisões dos agentes com relação a decisão de casar e estudar pode estar conectado considerando que homens e mulheres têm preferências pelo casamento intragrupo. No modelo estudado encontramos que as preferências para o casamento intragrupo podem aumentar a proporção de homens e mulheres que decidem se casar e estudar. Mostramos também que empiricamente há um positive assortative mating entre pessoas com as mesmas características, tais como, educação, religião ou raça. Além disso, a probabilidade de casais casados na mesma religião aumenta a probabilidade dos casais estarem casados dentro do mesmo nível de escolaridade. Considerando as mudanças em como os casais se formam, a composição educacional e os retornos da educação que aconteceram no Brasil nos últimos anos, investiga-se os impactos dessas mudanças na desigualdade de renda dos casais. Calculamos cenários contrafactuais para o Coeficiente de Gini mantendo uma dessas três variáveis fixas em um determinado ano, comparando o contrafactual estimado com o Gini real. Se o casamento for formado aleatoriamente com relação à educação, o Coeficiente de Gini seria menor do que o real. Mantendo os retornos da educação fixos no ano de 2014 encontramos um Gini contrafactual menor do que o real.

This study explores the desire to marry, marriageable mate criteria, and marital choices/options as they pertain to college-educated, African American women within today’s society. A purposive, nationally based sample (N = 95) of never married, college-educated, African American women (i.e., 18 to 40 years of age) was gathered via an online survey accessed by an emailed link. A mixed methods approach was utilized within the survey design, followed by data analyses (i.e., frequencies, two-way analyses) interpreted through a theoretical framework of social exchange. Areas discussed include life goals of marriage, cohabitation, and career; romantic barriers; the perceived availability of marriageable men; and desired traits for a marriageable mate. Partner traits assessed ranged from being character based (e.g., respectful, spiritual, swag, never incarcerated), and were broadened to include educational, financial, and ethnic preferences for a potential partner. Findings showed that respondents possessed a strong desire to marry, the greatest hindrance to entering a relationship was the lack of mates, and many were interested in looking for a potential partner outside of their own ethnicity. Findings were not statistically significant; however, the insight gained further informs this understudied area of research while having broad socio-cultural implications for families and communities.

Diss. Stockholm : Handelshögskolan, 2009 Sammanfattning jämte 6 uppsatser