A Marriage Market, Full Of Lemons

“Hi. I am 24. I am still single. And happy�

“Hi, 24!� They yelled.

I was at the local version of a “Singles Anonymous� meeting. My friends made me join it. They thought I was on the verge of insanity. They still do. How can someone as single as I was, actually be happy?

My best friend feared I would end as up as a “Chronically alone person�. I disagreed. I think staying un-hitched is a very smart choice. Anyway I will indulge into this debate some other time.

So here I was, around singles of all shapes and sizes. Some were complaining. And some were in denial. Therefore we were split into two groups. Ending up in “Those-in-denial� group did not come as a surprise to me.

As I sat there, listening to stories of failed love, broken marriages, cheating partners and those insisting that they did not have time to mingle, I could not help but think about George Akerlof.

For those of you who do not know Akerlof, he is an absolutely brilliant man. Oh please, I am not inclined towards him due to romantic reasons. I am, in fact, praising his brilliant mind and what he came up with.

I don’t remember the first time I came across the paper that he wrote, which later earned him a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics. And I seriously believe that the phenomenon I am going through of “singleness� can be perfectly explained by his research paper, "The Market for Lemons: Quality Uncertainty and the Market Mechanism".

Of course, there is a slight alteration. Where Akerlof spoke about the asymmetry of information in the automobile industry, I will talk about the quality uncertainty and information asymmetry in the marriage market.

Here is my take on this:

Assume there are 4 kinds of men in the singles-market: There are “single and never-married-before� men (Type-A) and there are “single but previously-married-and-divorced men (Type-B). Then there are good men and there are bad men. I will, like Akerlof, call the bad men, Lemons. A Type-A man can be good or a lemon. And same applies for a Type-B man. To make the analysis simpler, I am also assuming that men who lie about being already married do not exist (Thus, no Type-C).

Women get hooked/hitched, without knowing whether the men they are ending up are good or lemons. But as in Akerlof’s paper, I will assign the probability of ending up with a good man as (q) and with a lemon as (1-q).

Once they start dating or get married, women get a fair idea of the kind of man they are with (at least I “hope� they do). Therefore the latter estimate of probabilities is more accurate than the original one. However, the families and close friends of men, will always have better information about them. Thus, for women, when getting into a relationship, differentiating between a good man and a lemon is nearly impossible.

Of course, Type A will always be better than Type B, the latter being already gone through the process of marriage. However, sadly Type A non-lemon can never get hooked with a woman of their own league and vice versa, for that matter. The rebuttal that exceptions always exist, does not apply to this analytical narration.

Due to the asymmetry of information present between both parties, it is highly unlikely that men and women can ever get matches of their own leagues. Here, we also assume that those who, by chance, do tend to meet due to an externality which we will call “fate�, it is with a very high probability that at least one side of the party will already be hitched, probably to someone of a league lower than their own. This, we generally call, the “All good men are taken� phenomenon.

Anyway, due to the uncertainty present and hardly any information about the type of men and their “lemon� factor, women will value both good and lemons as the same kind. The disappointment for Type A, good men, will cause them to go through the same singleness phenomenon, unable to compromise. But eventually they will be happy. And at peace. For being single. And not ready to mingle. Why compromise now, to regret later?.

Like, what Akerlof describes for the car-industry, in the marriage market, all Type-A, good men will be driven out. (Driven out where, is still to be discovered). What will be left, is what we all see today. All lemons.

I stop my analysis here. I am 24. And happy to be single.