Based on economic theory, this book offers a novel approach to understanding the marital dynamic, explaining the substantive regulation of marriage and modeling legal outcomes at the conflict of laws level. Marriage law and international marriage law are presented as two sides of the same coin, two separate but complementary areas of the law dealing with different aspects of the relationship, pursuing the same goal: providing a legal framework to encourage continued cooperation between spouses a positive spiral of repeated non-zero-sum-games that enable both of them to obtain benefits of various kinds which are difficult or even impossible to achieve separately. On this ground the author proposes specific rules to regulate the party autonomy for the law governing the relationship, and to determine the applicable law in absence of a choice of law agreement for key aspects of the relationship: maintenance obligations, divorce, and property regime.
