The engagement game

Amy Farmer () and Andrew W. Horowitz ()

Journal of Population Economics, 2004, vol. 17, issue 4, 627-644

Abstract: Engagement is a costly social institution for which virtually no economic analysis exists. We explore the information gathering function of engagement in a game with a proposer who offers a long or short engagement, and a respondent, who may reject the proposal at various stages. Whether the proposer is a suitable match is uncertain, but a long engagement yields information with which the respondent can update prior probabilities. We consider pooling, separating and mixed strategy equilibria and relate our findings to the evolving institution of engagement and institutional circumstances that will improve its efficiency in generating successful matches. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2004

Keywords: D8; J1; R2; Information; household; engagement (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s00148-003-0175-9 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:spr:jopoec:v:17:y:2004:i:4:p:627-644

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... tion/journal/148/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s00148-003-0175-9

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Population Economics is currently edited by K.F. Zimmermann

More articles in Journal of Population Economics from Springer, European Society for Population Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().