Source: David Friedman’s Substack
by David Friedman
“Men want wives, women want husbands. The price of a wife or a husband is what you have to give up to get her or him. In some societies, but rarely in ours, it takes the form of cash paid as bride price, dowry or dower. While explicit payments of this sort are not a part of our marriage institutions, people who get married do so with some general understanding of the terms they are committing themselves to: how free a hand each will have with the common funds, what duties each is expected to perform, and so on. Think of the terms of this understanding as a price serving the same function as an explicit price in other markets.” (01/03/25)