A marriage matching function with flexible spillover and substitution patterns

摘要

This paper proposes a new and easy-to-estimate marriage matching function (MMF). I show under minimal conditions the existence of the equilibrium marriage matching distribution associated with the proposed MMF and provide testable conditions under which the equilibrium is unique. This MMF allows more flexible spillover and substitution patterns than the existing MMFs. I show that the static frictionless transferable utility (TU) matching model with peer effects and the dynamic (imperfect) TU marriage matching model both generate MMFs that are each a special case of this proposed MMF. Moreover, I show that the MMF generated by the dynamic TU marriage matching model a la Choo (Econometrica 83(4): 1373-1423, 2015) can be rationalized by a static frictionless TU marriage matching model with peer effects. I show how the estimation of this MMF can be used to estimate peer effect coefficients in a marriage matching model.