The optimal reservation utility in models of decision making in arranged marriages

Amitrajeet Batabyal

Applied Economics Letters, 2009, vol. 16, issue 17, 1695-1698

Abstract: The notion of a reservation quality or utility is a key feature of Batabyal's (2003a) recent analysis of decision making in arranged marriages. In this model, the magnitude of the reservation utility has a nontrivial impact on the decision to accept or decline a marriage proposal. Even so, Batabyal (2003a) treats the marrying agent's reservation utility as an exogenous variable. Consequently, the purpose of this article is to endogenize the reservation utility variable in the context of a dynamic and stochastic model of decision making in arranged marriages. Our analysis leads to two results. First, we demonstrate that the optimal reservation utility is the solution to a particular maximization problem. Second, we show that theoretical circumstances exist in which the optimal reservation utility is unique.

Date: 2009
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.informaworld.com/openurl?genre=article& ... 40C6AD35DC6213A474B5 (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:taf:apeclt:v:16:y:2009:i:17:p:1695-1698

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.tandfonline.com/pricing/journal/RAEL20

DOI: 10.1080/13504850701625800

Access Statistics for this article

Applied Economics Letters is currently edited by Anita Phillips

More articles in Applied Economics Letters from Taylor & Francis Journals
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Longhurst ().