The Institutional Economics of Marriage: A Reinterpretation of Margaret Brinig's Contribution to Family Law

Douglas W. Allen*

Margaret (Peg) Brinig has made a massive contribution to family law over the course of the past thirty-five years. Spanning the two fields of economics and law, her views have evolved over time to ones that see family as a matter of covenant. The concept of a covenant is mostly unknown in the modern secular world and is absent in economics. Without (hopefully) changing Brinig’s meaning, I reinterpret her work and argue that her concept of a covenant is equivalent to the economist’s understanding of an institution. The goal of reinterpreting her work in light of institutional economics is to make it more accessible to economists and to provide additional transaction-cost insight into why a covenant is so important.

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© 2020 Douglas W. Allen. Individuals and nonprofit institutions may reproduce and distribute copies of this Essay in any format at or below cost, for educational purposes, so long as each copy identifies the author, provides a citation to the Notre Dame Law Review, and includes this provision in the copyright notice.

*Burnaby Mountain Professor of Economics, Simon Fraser University. Thanks to Peg for her comments.