（练英文写作，同时求交流。这篇论文很有意思，用合约理论分析了童养媳等旧中国婚姻现象。）

Comments by Guo, Rufei on

Cheung, Steven N.S., 1972, “The Enforcementof Property Rights in Children, and the Marriage Contract”, The Economic Journal, 82, pp. 641-657.

Steven Cheung employed various concepts andtheories of economics in analyzing the marriage contracts in ancient China. Stevenstates that children are kept as private property of parents (especially thehead of a family). To guarantee the private property rights of parents onchildren, parents are granted exclusive rights in arranging marriage and derivingincome from their children. In addition, an unregulated competitive market isobserved from the fact that marriage brokers (mei ren) serve to collectinformation and facilitate negotiation between the two contracting parties. Competitivebidding exists and helps the formation of the market price of the bride.

Steven argues that, by consideringtransaction costs, we are able to explain the marriage practices of the ancientChina.Namely, the marriage practices mainly serve to reduce the transaction costs ofthe marriage contract.

In Cooter and Ulen’s text book, transactioncost of a contract is classified as three types: searching cost, negotiationcost and enforcement cost. The existence of the marriage broker, as mentionedin the first paragraph, reduces the searching and negotiation cost of themarriage contract significantly by specialization. The enforcement costinvolves the danger of running away of the bride, which is reduced byfoot-binding.

Then here comes a question: why not sellthe son and bind his feet? Steven argues that foot-binding can form a greatdisadvantage in the kind of work where a male had a comparative advantage, asfarming. But it is not a great impediment for the ability of weaving and otherdomestic work carried out by female. As a result, bind the daughter yieldshigher returns.

Tong-yang-xi, a present marriage contractfor infants, is also analyzed. Why is it mainly the poor who sold tong-yang-xi?The reason lies in the transaction cost of the money market: the borrowing rateis higher than the lending rate, thus the present value of the grown daughteris lower for the poor who had to borrow money to raise the girl and use theborrowing rate as the discount rate. There is also a kind of future contract inthe marriage market, namely “Pulp for the marriage”.

The hierarchy within a family as a socialcustom also serves to reduce the cost of delineation and enforcement ofproperty rights among family members. Ceremonial rites and the cult ofancestors repeatedly emphasized the ranking system inside a family andfacilitate and distribution of rights within a family.

In the modern society, the vanishing of theunregulated competitive marriage market is accompanied by the alienation ofConfucian ethics and complex kinship terms. My roommate Sun Hang argues thatthe existence of marriage is mainly for the raise of children. In my opinion,the extension of kinship by marriage is another main benefit. Marriage meansthe combination of the resources of two families. Since the risk of deceivingis lower for transactions between family members, marriage greatly expand thenumber of people who can be trusted and reduced the information cost of thefamily members of both sides. Given that marriage is an exchange of familybackground, the traditional requirement of marriage within the same socialclass is the natural requirement of equal exchange in a trade.