In big dating or job markets, it turns out it doesn't really matter which side makes the first move.
March 26, 2026
Original Paper
Random Matching Markets with Correlated Preferences
arXiv · 2603.24526
The Takeaway
Classic game theory says the side that initiates a match (like employers or men) gets their best possible outcome while the other side gets their worst. This paper proves that if people have even slightly similar tastes, the mathematical advantage of being the 'proposer' disappears entirely in large markets.
From the abstract
In the Gale-Shapley model of two-sided matching, it is well known that for generic preferences, the outcomes for each side can vary dramatically in the male-optimal vs. female-optimal stable matchings. In this paper, we show that under a widely used characterization of similarity in rankings, even a weak correlation in preferences guarantees assortative matching with high probability as the market size tends to infinity. It follows that the men's average ranking of women and the women's average