Influence of Over-and Underconfidence on Marriage Market

This paper is an examination of the influence of an individual’s self-confidence (over- confidence or underconfidence) on others in the marriage market. We consider a model in which there are three types of men and women according to marital charm, and some men/women overestimate/underestimate their own types. The result obtained is that the self-confidence of some single individuals affects not only themselves but also the marital behavior of other rational singles in the market. Furthermore, self-confidence improves the welfare of the economy if there are enough underconfident men/women or if there are sufficiently few overconfident men/women in the marriage market.