Marriage laws and growth in Sub-Saharan Africa

Many Sub-Saharan African countries are extremely poor. It has been argued that the marriage system -- in particular polygyny -- is one contributing factor to the lack of development in this region. Polygyny leads to low incentives to save, depressing the capital stock and output. Enforcing monogamy might seem like an obvious solution. However, such a law will have winners and losers. In this paper, we investigate the transition from a polygynous to a monogamous steady state