Essays on Matching in Labor Economics

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In this dissertation, I present three essays on matching and assignment in labor economics. The first chapter presents an integrated model of occupation choice, spouse choice, family labor supply, and fertility. Two key features of the model are that occupations differ both in wages and in an amenity termed flexibility, and that children require a nontrivial amount of parental time that has no market substitute. I show that occupations with more costly flexibility, modeled as a nonlinearity in wages, have a lower fraction of women, less positive assortative mating on earnings, and lower fertility among dual-career couples. Costly flexibility may induce high-earning couples to share home production, which rewards husbands who are simultaneously high-earning and productive in child care. Empirical evidence broadly supports the main theoretical predictions with respect to the tradeoffs between marriage market and career outcomes.