This paper studies the role played by caste, education and other social and economic attributes in arranged marriages … newspaper, the responses they received, how they ranked them, and the eventual matches. We estimate the preferences for caste … frictionless marriage market. One of our key empirical findings is that there is a very strong preference for within-caste marriage …

This paper analyzes how preferences for a non-economic characteristic, such as caste, can affect equilibrium patterns …-class Indians. We develop a model that demonstrates how the equilibrium consequences of caste depend on whether we observe a bias … towards one’s own group or if there is a preference for “marrying up”. We then estimate actual preferences for caste …