"Dating Is Like A Marketplace"

What Can Online Dating Teach Us About Economics? by Julie D. Andrews

http://m.theweek.com/article/index/256455/what-online-dating-can-teach-us-about-economics

In this article by Julie D. Andrews it

"Turns out online dating (or, say, the marketplace of life partners) operates a lot like other markets, says Paul Oyer, an economics professor at the Stanford Graduate School of Business" 

"On a dating site, lots of members mean lots of available potential matches. Assuming the algorithm of each site you visit is good at matching members, if you're given 10 matches from a site with 100 members and 10 from a site with 10,000, bigger is better. You'll see more options over time, and the matches will likely better suit you. This is what is called a "thick market" — one with a lot of options — and a thick market is usually more efficient. In the book, I use the example of buying a pair of jeans: If you have an hour to shop, would you rather be in Manhattan or in a rural community? The city, of course, because there are more options and more chances you'll find what you need." I thought this article was... So fascinating. While the two topics are completely different, economics and online dating that is, the two are remarkedly comparable. They're so similar and it helped me gain a new kind of understanding of economics. If you've ever been on any kind of social media site, you'll find that sometimes you will come across an account with photoshopped profile pictures, and subtle lies of sorts. These things are done to make a person look more attractive and interesting. Well, apparently businesses do this too and economists are catching on to their little game. Businesses are now sugar coating offers to draw in a crowd and more potential buyers, in an effort to look more attractive. "Economists think of lying as a rational thing to increase utility, or happiness. Where parties' interests aren't completely aligned, we expect some people will misrepresent the truth.

A large portion of lying on dating sites is a rational response to try to improve the number of responses a profile gets. Even if you're determined to be 100 percent honest when setting up an online profile, you should expect that your competition is fudging the truth. It comes back to a theory called "cheap talk," which is a branch of game theory. This framework considers the potential conflict between a party's own preferences and the person he or she is trying to attract, to analyze when (or if) it's sensible to hide information or lie. This could take the form of a dater misrepresenting himself online, or an executive sugarcoating things to boost their stock prices."