The Economics of Arranged Marriage

This monograph asks why arranged marriage persists across South Asia, the Middle East, and diaspora communities despite a century of modernization, and what determines its success. Drawing on economics, game theory, sociology, and demography, it develops formal models of marriage markets, analyzing information asymmetries, matching, and partner selection, tested against survey data from Pakistan. The first chapter surveys the global literature on theoretical frameworks, empirical evidence, and debates around gender agency, dowry, and marital outcomes. The second chapter builds economic models of arranged marriage markets, distinguishing commitment mechanisms from equilibrium matching. The third synthesizes findings on welfare: when arranged marriages succeed and what shapes their quality and stability. Throughout, the work refuses dichotomies of tradition versus modernity, treating arranged marriage as a complex adaptive institution shaped by strategic interaction, information constraints, and evolving norms. The result is a rigorous and interdisciplinary account of the world's most prevalent yet understudied form of union formation.