A Dynamic and Stochastic Analysis of Decision Making in Arranged Marriages

Recently, Batabyal (1998) has analyzed the nature of the decision making process in arranged marriages. Specifically, he has shown that a marrying agent's optimal policy depends only on the properties of the current marriage proposal, independent of whether there is recall of earlier marriage proposals. In this paper, I continue this line of inquiry. I examine the decision making problem faced by a marrying agent who wishes to maximize the probability of getting married to the best possible candidate. Inter alia, I show that this agent's optimal policy calls for waiting a while and then saying yes to the first candidate thereafter