Watta Satta: Bride Exchange and Women's Welfare in Rural Pakistan

摘要

Marriage is perhaps the epitome of an incomplete contract; its terms can never be fully specified ex ante or enforced ex post. A vast body of literature has thus highlighted the role of post-marital bargaining in determining intrahousehold allocations (seminal papers include Marilyn Manser and Murray Brown 1980; Marjorie B. McElroy and Mary Jean Horney 1981; and Shelly J. Lundberg and Robert A. Pollak 1993).2 In traditional societies, where women's formal legal rights are often weak, divorce is strongly stigmatized, and there is a high premium on female virginity, bargaining power can shift radically in favor of the man once the woman commits herself to marriage. This fact should have implications for the form of the marriage "contract"; in particular, we would expect its ex ante provisions to reflect the interests of the wife and her family in deterring or mitigating ex post malfeasance on the part of the husband.