The 2010 Nobel Prize for economics went to Peter Diamond, Dale Mortensen and Christopher Pissarides (DMP) for modeling ‘search and matching’, more precisely, explaining how workers and employers find each other. And for showing why even in a market in equilibrium, where each worker would have a matching job, there is unemployment.
Looks like their findings teach us something about dating and marriage – in fact the laureates have sometimes pointed this out themselves.
Take ten hot tips from both their assumptions and conclusions:
1. Finding Mr. / Mrs Right takes time. Always. You have to spend time, effort, hard thinking and maybe money on finding the right person. Just wishing it and being ready is not enough; matchmaking, by its nature, does not happen instantly.
2. Shit happens. Relationships do break apart, sometimes occasioned by reasons outside the couple. A match that once was ‘productive’ for both can lose its productivity, sending both partners out on the search again.
3. In a world where there is a match for everyone, there will still be singlehood. This is because finding Mr/s Right takes time and Shit happens. When a good match breaks apart through external shxt, both partners will have to search for a while until they find their new match.
4. For a couple to form, both must be better off than when single. And for a couple to remain, both must be better off than with the next best alternative. A good match usually generates a ‘surplus’ for both, i.e. good stuff, happiness – for example freed up time cause the other one chipped in with the chores. The division of those parts of the happiness that are divisible must be such that neither has the incentive to keep searching.
5. Sometimes, people settle because they are tired of waiting. Don’t! These are unstable matches, and dissolve when something better comes along. Which is likely if you settled.
6. The search effort pays off more if there are many competing partners. E.g. it pays off more for women if there are many men relative to women. The opposite is also true: you don’t want to be in competition for a partner. How to arrange for a beneficial gender ratio you can read here.
7. Dating agencies bring people together more quickly and reduce the incidence of singlehood – if the agencies compete with each other.
8. The couples that form are best for the partners that make the proposal. These are the employers in the labor market and – traditionally – men in the marriage market. This is because the proposers have the first shot at a choice and therefore set the agenda more than the responding party. In modern times, however, nothing should hold a lady back from proposing to her man. (I know two women who did that and both made excellent matches).
9. Women have a better outcome in marriage if they find a way to sweeten their wait. If we assume that men propose and women respond, the woman’s role is best reflected by the worker in the Nobel model. In the labor market, job-seeking workers have sometimes access to unemployment benefits – which make their wait sweeter. Benefit recipients enter better paying jobs because they can afford to wait for them. If women find a way to afford a longer wait, say through socializing a lot against the loneliness, and keeping healthy against a ticking clock – they will enter better relationships.
10. They also have a better outcome if they agree and enforce collectively what they expect. Workers that negotiate collectively through a trade union will ensure that a larger share of the “match surplus” (in the case of our interest “relationship happiness” or any benefits generated by the relationship) goes to the worker (woman).