YOUR usually dedicated economics correspondent has recently been considering ditching the world of journalism to start a new app: "Economistr". Like Tinder, but for economists. Your correspondent is very excited by this idea. The world of dating is rife with inefficiency—and we all know how economists hate inefficiency. Apps that reduce congestion in the dating market by filtering out princes-not-so-charming have huge value—just look at JSwipe, which matches Jewish couples, or glutenfreesingles.com, which...just guess.
But before I get as carried away as a game theorist with two newly caught prisoners, a quick reality check is in order. For a dating app to work, the market for singletons must be "thick" enough. It must establish a network large enough to benefit from "network externalities", where all the single economists flock to where the other single economists are. Just think of Amazon and eBay—buyers want to be where there are lots of sellers, and vice versa.
To generate such a thick market, economists have to want to date other economists. The presence of economist super-couples is a positive sign—imagine the scintillating dinner table conversations of Rose and Milton Friedman, or Janet Yellen, the chair of the Federal Reserve and George Akerlof, a Nobel prize-winning economist. Economists who couple with someone outside the club might wistfully imagine dinner conversations that do not involve explaining in patronising tones what Pareto efficiency is—or even worse, avoiding mention of it altogether at risk of being told "you’re such an economist". Economists might even gravitate towards others of their kind because of the signal that such a label sends. As outlined in a paper in the Journal of Economic Perspectives, economists think of themselves as superior within the social sciences. They also earn more.
INTERACTIVE: Compare romantic city-breaks across the globe with our
But a harder look at the data reveals that your correspondent has suffered from confirmation bias (misinterpreting information to confirm preconceptions). In fact, economists do not display a particular desire to match with other economists. An analysis from Priceonomics, a data consultancy company, found that only 8% of those with an economics degree married another with an economics degree, compared to 17% for music and 15% for computer science. Now this might be because economists didn’t have the "Economistr" app to help them out. Or it could be something to do with the gender imbalance within economics. Split by men and women, 12% of women with economics degrees match to men with economics degrees (ranking 21st out of 50 subjects compared) compared to 5% of men (43rd out of 50 subjects).
The final potential explanation is bad news for the app. That is, it is not at all clear that it would appeal to a rational economist. Compared with other students, studies have shown that economists are more likely to behave selfishly in bargaining situations. A truly rational economist would hesitate before seeking a union with someone who, on average, would be so ungenerous.
If not enough economists sign up to the app, then one danger is that it will suffer from an economist's nightmare: adverse selection. If only weirdos desperate to communicate in algebra start using it, then that will put off the more normal ones. Sifting these algebra-touting oddballs from the dating pool could be akin to providing a public service, so perhaps rather than approaching venture capitalists, your correspondent might have more luck raising cash among the non-economist users of existing apps.
