A Practical Revealed Preference Model for Separating Preferences and Availability Effects in Marriage Formation

Abstract

Many demographic problems require models for partnership formation. We consider a model for matchings within a bipartite population where individuals have utility for people based on observed and unobserved characteristics. It represents both the availability of potential partners of different types and the preferences of individuals for such people. We develop an estimator for the preference parameters based on sample survey data on partnerships and population composition. We conduct simulation studies based on the Survey of Income and Program Participation showing that the estimator recovers preference parameters that are invariant under different population availabilities and has the correct confidence coverage.

The R software package rpm implementing these methods is here and on CRAN.