Marriage Supermarket

I read about it in Tim Harford’s book “The Logic of Life.”

It is a very simple model of marriage. Imagine 20 single guys and 20 single girls in a room. Any man and any woman who present themselves as ‘married’ at the checkout get to collect 100 dollars and leave. Since any couple can collect 100 dollars to split between them, the only question is how to divide the spoils. With equal numbers of men and women, we can expect a 50-50 split.

Imagine an unusual evening in the supermarket, when 20 single women show up but only 19 single men. Would the slight scarcity of men cause the women some inconvenience? Or a major disaster? Would the split of the money be slightly different from 50-50, say 52-48? Or 99.99-0.01?

I will post the answer tomorrow.