Recently, I’ve been thinking about the frustration people feel with dating in the 21st century. I’m certainly frustrated, and I think I’ve come up with a decent economic model that helps explain it. I think I can explain a lot of what’s going on, from women’s higher standards, to the rise of looks-based dating (including the anthropological discussion about men turning to plastic surgery), to the increasing number of single men. I hope that at least one of the comparative statics will be interesting, though for some of you this may seem obvious. Note that all of this is about monogamous dating.
The model I propose is a two-sided matching model, merged with... (read 1020 more words →)