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New jobs for economists
Michael Schwartz [my link] earned an economics doctorate from Stanford Univeristy before spending five years as an assistant profesor of microeconomics at Harvard University. His research papers include "Synchronization under Uncertainty."
These days, Mr. Schwartz is thinking about how to use economics to save attractive women from unwanted solicitations on an Internet dating site [TC: he needs to confer with Miss Passey]. One idea employs the concept of "scarcity," rationing the number of messages each lothario can send. Another uses full disclosure, by displaying how many people a suitor has already approached.
...A person familiar with the matter says Yahoo aims to build a team of more than a dozen economists.
...Mr. Schwartz...[is] currently writing a research paper about economic markets where one side of a potential transaction is eager to profess its preference for the other side, as is often the case with hiring and online dating. The unequal relationship make such markets complicated and unpredictable.
That is from today's Wall Street Journal, p.1, "Hoping to Overtake its Rivals, Yahoo Stocks Up on the Academics."
Posted by Tyler Cowen on August 25, 2006 at 07:41 AM in Economics | Permalink
Comments
These days, Mr. Schwartz is thinking about how to use economics to save attractive women from unwanted solicitations on an Internet dating site
Is this somehow supposed to be a problem?
Posted by: Matthew Cromer at Aug 25, 2006 8:37:38 AM
"Is this somehow supposed to be a problem?"
Yes, it is. What happens is a lot of men just send a form letter to every woman who posts a nice picture, regardless of what her profile says about what she's looking for (and whether he even comes remotely close to having it). So women have to sort through dozens if not hundreds of responses, and many of the sincere, thoughtful men never receive replies to their e-mails because they were buried amongst the form letters.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Aug 25, 2006 10:55:34 AM
(Jacqueline, I guess that Matthew was kidding...)
Posted by: leo at Aug 25, 2006 11:40:06 AM
It's tough being beautiful.
But actually, I agree this is a problem that online personals companies should try to address to improve their overall customer satisfaction, and as much ridicule as Miss Passey has taken (including from me), she is right that there are inefficiencies in the dating market.
Posted by: Dirk at Aug 25, 2006 11:42:26 AM
Gosh, I'm glad I found my bride before the Internet era.
War and peace, world poverty, good looking women getting too many e-mail, this is a tough planet.
Posted by: save_the_rustbelt at Aug 25, 2006 12:21:56 PM
For each date-seeking woman[1] auction to her suitors, at intervals, the right to send her an email and receive a (possibly curt) reply. Display the complete history of previous auctions and feedback from suitors who previously won. The date-seeker must permit suitors to review an accurate (preferably independently- verified) profile of photos, measurements, and biographical data. The money collected from successful bidders must not go to the date-seeker[2], but should fund prizes in a series of hourly lotteries. The lottery tickets should be distributed to suitors who win email auctions in proportion to the size of their winning bids.
It is well known that a large component of a man's attractiveness (in the eyes of females; speaking generally, of course) is his command of economic resources. The auction scheme will reveal to the date-seeking woman a good proxy for that component. By varying the interval between auctions, the date-seeker may regulate the volume of email she must deal with. (Of course date-seekers should have means to exclude some would-be suitors from bidding.)
For what it's worth, bidding interest will also reveal to date-seekers just how attractive they really are to potential suitors.
Likely an equilibrium would soon obtain where suitors bid chiefly for rights to contact women "in their league." Bids to win short-interval auctions would be lower because the winner's message would have less chance to stand out. It would take higher bids to contact date-seekers with positive feedback from previous winners.
It would be important to return to suitors most of the money they pay when they win--over the long run. You want individual bids to be sincere, so bidders have to risk real money. But you want suitors to participate repeatedly, so you must help them avoid big losses. You can satisfy both constraints by implementing a scheme (I have suggested one) that will give bidders an expected return in the range of 98% of what they pay in, but with considerable short-term variance.
[1] Rights to email attractive (rich) men could be auctioned similarly, though cash may be a poor proxy for what men find desirable.
[2] Paying auction receipts to date-seekers would incentivize too much false advertising.
Posted by: Mark Seecof at Aug 25, 2006 3:30:47 PM
Here you go, Jacqueline:
http://www.wealthymen.com/
Posted by: Patrick R. Sullivan at Aug 25, 2006 6:34:09 PM
Heh, I once participated in a bachelorette auction as a fundraiser for the Free State Project, and it was a similar sort of situation -- the single male:single female ratio of the organization probably being at least 10:1.
Posted by: Jacqueline at Aug 27, 2006 1:52:38 AM
Straw man on economics from anthropologist:
http://www.cultureby.com/trilogy/2006/08/yahoo_and_the_e.html#comments
Posted by: Mikkel at Aug 27, 2006 12:20:24 PM
It would take higher bids to contact date-seekers with positive feedback from previous winners.
hmmm, seems like they have that problem at sfredbook too! :)
good ideas though -- one difficult part will be the UI/marketing aspect of it. will people really enjoy bidding for dates, and being bid on? Maybe.
Posted by: blah at Aug 27, 2006 5:23:07 PM
See, this is why the economic way of thinking bothers so many people. Mark's plan is intelligent, it would probably work (at least for some existent set of possible preferences), and in general would be a good idea for at least one site to try out.
Yet at the same time, it's horrible and disturbing and altogether f***ed up.
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