The economics of cousin marriage

The title of the article is “Cousin Marriage Is Not Choice: Muslim Marriage and Underdevelopment,” by Lena Edlund, and here is the abstract:

According to classical Muslim marriage law, a woman needs her guardian’s (viz. father’s) consent to marry. However, the resulting marriage payment, the mahr, is hers. This split bill may lie behind the high rates of consanguineous marriage in the Muslim world, where country estimates range from 20 to 60 percent. Cousin marriage can stem from a form of barter in which fathers contribute daughters to an extended family bridal pool against sons’ right to draw from the same pool. In the resulting system, women are robbed of their mahr and sons marry by guarding their sisters’ “honor” heeding clan elders.

From the new May American Economic Review.