Monday, February 20, 2006
Relationships I -- Bargaining Power
Starting on Thursday, we will start examining relationships -- who do we date, why do we break-up, is their dating market failure at Harvard, ... I hope to post as many of my various thoughts and models as I can over the next week. I know that this is one of the more popular topics in the course, so I will also try and post links to a variety of interesting articles I have found over the years.
To start, check out this article by Tim Hartford on "The economic case for polygamy" from Slate. Economists like to make this provocative argument. I first encountered it in Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist. Landsburg argues that monogamy stems from men not wanting to compete as hard for women. That is, men formed a cartel in order to restrict their supply and discourage competition. He argues that, if given the chance, men are more likely then women to pursue polygamous relationships. As such, if polygamy were legal, there would be intense competition for women which would give women the upper hand in relationship bargaining. To counter this pressure, men colluded to create and enforce a one man, one woman rule which improved their bargaining position. Hartford picks up this argument and examines the evidence that men or women in societies with gender imbalances (due to war, prison, or selective abortion) have worse relationship outcomes.
I once tried to investigate these effects myself in a couple of ways. First, I wanted to exploit random variation in the gender mix within school cohorts to examine dating and relationship outcomes in US schools. A quirk of nature created a severe gender imbalance in my school cohort (in my middle school, guys outnumbered girls 2 to 1 -- not surprisingly, we were "the worst class" to pass through the school in as long as anyone could remember). As such, the women of my class should have faced more competition for their attention, and I want to know what they bargain for. Unfortunately, the dataset I wanted to use lacked precise information on gender ratios and did not include enough schools with significant deviations from 50-50 mixing to allow for identification.
My second approach was to examine relationship outcomes for tall girls or short males. I know many girls, like my 6'2" "little" sister, adopt a rule that they won't date anyone who is shorter than they are. As such, we might expect that tall girls and short males to face weaker bargaining positions (and tall men and short women strong positions) in the market for dates. I did a little work on this, but don't recall being that successful. In principle, this should work. Perhaps, someone should consider investigating this for their term paper.
To start, check out this article by Tim Hartford on "The economic case for polygamy" from Slate. Economists like to make this provocative argument. I first encountered it in Steven Landsburg's The Armchair Economist. Landsburg argues that monogamy stems from men not wanting to compete as hard for women. That is, men formed a cartel in order to restrict their supply and discourage competition. He argues that, if given the chance, men are more likely then women to pursue polygamous relationships. As such, if polygamy were legal, there would be intense competition for women which would give women the upper hand in relationship bargaining. To counter this pressure, men colluded to create and enforce a one man, one woman rule which improved their bargaining position. Hartford picks up this argument and examines the evidence that men or women in societies with gender imbalances (due to war, prison, or selective abortion) have worse relationship outcomes.
I once tried to investigate these effects myself in a couple of ways. First, I wanted to exploit random variation in the gender mix within school cohorts to examine dating and relationship outcomes in US schools. A quirk of nature created a severe gender imbalance in my school cohort (in my middle school, guys outnumbered girls 2 to 1 -- not surprisingly, we were "the worst class" to pass through the school in as long as anyone could remember). As such, the women of my class should have faced more competition for their attention, and I want to know what they bargain for. Unfortunately, the dataset I wanted to use lacked precise information on gender ratios and did not include enough schools with significant deviations from 50-50 mixing to allow for identification.
My second approach was to examine relationship outcomes for tall girls or short males. I know many girls, like my 6'2" "little" sister, adopt a rule that they won't date anyone who is shorter than they are. As such, we might expect that tall girls and short males to face weaker bargaining positions (and tall men and short women strong positions) in the market for dates. I did a little work on this, but don't recall being that successful. In principle, this should work. Perhaps, someone should consider investigating this for their term paper.
// posted by BW @ 11:53 PM 
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