AI summary · arXiv: 2108.04885v2 · econ.TH

Benefits of marriage as a search strategy

Davi B. Costa
Original paper Submitted to arXiv on 10 Aug. 2021 34 pages, 21 figures License: CC BY 4.0

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The essentials

  • The paper proposes a model for mate searching and marriage in large societies
  • The model is based on a stochastic matching process and simple decision rules
  • Agents have preferences among themselves given by a probability distribution
  • Agents randomly search for better mates, forming new couples and breaking apart in the process
  • Marriage is implemented in the model by adding the decision of stopping searching for a better mate when the affinity between a couple is higher than a certain fixed amount
  • The study shows that average utility in the system with marriage can be higher than without it
  • Advice from the authors: don't marry the first person you like, but get married if you like your partner more than a certain threshold above average
  • Average utility attained in their stochastic model is smaller than with stable matching achieved using the Gale-Shapley algorithm
  • Having a central planner or an app to coordinate the marriage market and set a stable matching could be beneficial
  • Model's evolution of fraction of married couples compared with real-world data shows good agreement
  • An analytical expression is formulated to understand how mate searching and marriage dynamics unfold on larger scales
  • Research contributes to understanding mate searching and marriage dynamics in large societies through modeling and analysis
  • Highlights potential benefits of marriage as well as limitations compared to stable matching algorithms.

Key points written by AI: they may contain errors, check them against the paper.

AI-generated keywords: Mate searching Marriage Stochastic matching Utility Gale-Shapley algorithm

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  • Original abstract
The paper proposes and investigates a model for mate searching and marriage in large societies. The model is based on a stochastic matching process and simple decision rules, where agents have preferences among themselves given by a probability distribution. The agents randomly search for better mates, forming new couples and breaking apart in the process. Marriage is implemented in the model by adding the decision of stopping searching for a better mate when the affinity between a couple is higher than a certain fixed amount. The study shows that the average utility in the system with marriage can be higher than in the system without it. The authors provide some advice based on their results: don't marry the first person you like but get married if you like your partner more than a certain threshold above average. Furthermore, the paper finds that the average utility attained in their stochastic model is smaller than the one associated with a stable matching achieved using the Gale-Shapley algorithm. This suggests that having a central planner or an app to coordinate the marriage market and set a stable matching could be beneficial. To test its adequacy to describe real-world societies, they compare their model's evolution of fraction of married couples with real-world data and obtain good agreement. An analytical expression is also formulated for understanding how mate searching and marriage dynamics unfold on larger scales. Overall, this research contributes to understanding mate searching and marriage dynamics in large societies through modeling and analysis while highlighting potential benefits of marriage as well as limitations compared to stable matching algorithms.

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