How important are fidelity, loyalty, generosity, kindness? As an economist I think that a good marriage, like a good employment relationship, has shared vision, common interests, complementary abilities, and gains from specialization.
A long-term contract can facilitate relationship-specific investments. When I go over this in class, some bright student usually asks about the "spot market" in coupling and why it is usually illegal.
It is the relationship specific investments that differentiate marriage from a series of meaningless spot market transactions.
ReplyDelete