Abstract
Alimony or spousal support is a transfer of income between spouses intended mainly to reduce inequality in living standards following a divorce. Economic analysis provides two justifications for maintaining it in societies where women are now less financially dependent on their husbands and fault is no longer a decisive factor in divorce: the efficiency of marriage and the prevention of opportunism. It also provides some theoretical justifications for the methods used to calculate it.
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Bourreau-Dubois, C., Doriat-Duban, M. (2019). Alimony. In: Marciano, A., Ramello, G.B. (eds) Encyclopedia of Law and Economics. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_680
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4614-7753-2_680
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