Matching, Unanticipated Experiences, Divorce, Flirting, Rematching, Etc

Burkhard Schipper and Tina Danting Zhang
Additional contact information
Tina Danting Zhang: Department of Economics, University of California Davis

No 371, Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics

Abstract: We study dynamic decentralized two-sided matching in which players may encounter unanticipated experiences. As they become aware of these experiences, they may change their preferences over players on the other side of the market. Consequently, they may get ``divorced'' and rematch again with other agents, which may lead to further unanticipated experiences etc. A matching is stable if there is absence of pairwise common belief in blocking. Stable matchings can be destabilized by unanticipated experiences. Yet, we show that there exist self-confirming outcomes that are stable and do not lead to further unanticipated experiences. We introduce a natural decentralized matching process that, at each period assigns probability 1 - epsilon to the satisfaction of a mutual optimal blocking pair (if it exists) and picks any optimal blocking pair otherwise. The parameter epsilon is interpreted as a friction of the matching market. We show that for any decentralized matching process, frictions are necessary for convergence to stability even without unawareness. Our process converges to self-confirming stable outcomes. Further, we allow for bilateral communication/flirting that changes the awareness and say that a matching is flirt-proof stable if there is absence of communication leading to pairwise common belief in blocking. We show that our natural decentralized matching process converges to flirt-proof self-confirming outcomes.

Keywords: decentralized matching; unawareness; transformative experiences; endogenous preferences; disclosure (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C70 D83 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 42
Date: 2025-04-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-des
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://repec.dss.ucdavis.edu/files/mhzbm80vmvi7ez ... t/unawmatching18.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Matching, Unanticipated Experiences, Divorce, Flirting, Rematching, Etc (2025)
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:cda:wpaper:371

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of California, Davis, Department of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Letters and Science IT Services Unit ().