A Marriage Matching Function with Flexible Spillover and Substitution Patterns

This paper proposes a new and easy-to-estimate marriage matching function (MMF). Unlike existing MMFs, the equilibrium marriage matching distribution associated with the proposed MMF is not necessarily unique. I show its existence under minimal conditions, 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 frictionless TU marriage matching model both generate MMFs that are each a special case of this proposed MMF. Moreover, I show that an MMF generated by the dynamic frictionless TU marriage matching model a la Choo (2015, Econometrica, 83(4), 1373-1423) can always 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