http://www.slate.com/id/2188684/
http://www2.wiwi.hu-berlin.de/wt1/staff/ivanova-stenzel/asym-finaleercorrected3.pdf

Ladies, once you hit the big 30 there will be a shortage of good looking, sociable and successful bachelors. Marriage is an asymmetric one shot auction which leads to an interesting situation that we will call the Eligible Bachelor Paradox.

Gentlemen, as a strong proponent of men’s rights, it is my duty to reveal to you that a marriage proposal is a scam. Each proposal essentially is screened twice by the female partner. Women first decide whether or not they will be accepting marriage proposals at all. Secondly, a kneeling proposal is not an “I choose you” but a “Will you choose me?” Women generally hold more of the power in deciding who they want to marry.

In game theory, the Eligible Bachelor Paradox can be explained by bidding behavior in asymmetric auctions; in a simplistic situation you have two groups of female bidders, “strong bidders” (who because of personality, looks, intelligence, social status etc. are conventionally considered to be advantaged) and “weak bidders”. It is logical to assume that “strong bidders” would be consistent winners in a situation where they can outcompete the “weak bidders”. However, the reality is that in this simplified model “weak bidders” will often be the winners. Women who know that they can be outbid (by other women) are going to bid early and more aggressively. Women who are dealt the right cards (if you know what I mean) are the ones that are willing to hold out longer to further screen their options; this is otherwise known as playing hard to get.

For the sake of equality we can also divide males into two groups,  a “strong” and a “weak” group. The number of both groups is limited and once the “strong” males are taken by the female “weak bidders” early in the game leaving a higher proportion of “weak” males in relation to the higher proportion of female “strong bidders”. Thus this brings us to our paradox in which there is an abundance of attractive, eligible women as time goes on and there will be a shortage of eligible and appealing men. Maybe this gives us guy geeks some hope after all…

This model is not perfect because males do have at least some say in whom they choose to date and who they choose to marry. The auction and bidders cannot be categorized into just two groups because it is hard to assign a valuation to each possible partner and even if it were possible, these valuations change over time. Because of this, it is hard to conduct studies to see if the theory actually holds true. It would be very interesting to apply this theory onto a social graph network to see if different types of social groups have any effect on marriage choice. Another possible topic to pursue would be to see if there are any evolutionary traits that trigger this behavior in choosing somebody to marry.