Hooking up and connecting lives: Online dating and the economics of marriage search

Since the early 1990's, people have flocked to the internet to conduct an increasingly diverse set of market activities. It has been predicted that online markets will result in substantial declines in search costs and, as a consequence, efficiency gains.;In this dissertation, I study one market that stands to benefit from the internet: the marriage market. The offline marriage market is characterized by substantial search frictions and online dating websites may reduce these search frictions. Online dating websites have become widely used in the last decade, and while there has been much speculation about the consequences of online dating, little is actually known about it due to data limitations.;This dissertation contributes to the emerging literature on online search by using individual-level data on online dating use and relationship history from the Connected American Lives Survey (CALS) which I conducted in April 2007. I use these data to examine the patterns of use of online dating and to assess the consequences of online dating for the marriage market as a whole.;In Chapter 1, I introduce the CALS and examine descriptive evidence from this survey to document the growth and patterns of use of online dating. I find that online dating has become increasingly important as part of an individual's search strategy. I also find evidence suggestive of differential use of online dating by men and women.;In Chapter 2, I consider the predictions from models of marriage search and hypothesize that online dating will increase the turnover of relationships if it does indeed reduce search frictions. In this Chapter, I use information on online dating use and the timing of respondents' relationships from the CALS to estimate the relationship between online dating and relationship turnover. I find evidence of a positive association between online dating use and relationship turnover, with the results being particularly strong for women's ability to locate new partners.;In Chapter 3, I develop a model of search which incorporates the limited fertility horizon and career-family trade-off faced by women. From this model, I generate the hypothesis that highly-educated women will take up online dating to find a partner before they have reached the end of their fertility horizons, but after they have made their career investments. I use the CALS to test this prediction, and find evidence of this pattern of take-up.