On strategy and the likelihood of success in marital matchmaking under uncertainty

Individuals wishing to get married have made increasing use of matchmakers. This notwithstanding, economists have paid scant attention to the strategies employed by matchmakers and to the likelihood of success arising from the use of these strategies. Consequently, we first specify a “local” and then a “global” strategy for matching male and female clients and then we compute the expected total cost to a matchmaker from the use of these strategies. Next, we calculate the mean number of successes that our matchmaker can hope for. Finally, we provide an upper bound on the probability that the number of matching successes is at least 1+ θ times the mean number, where θ is any positive number.