One-Sided Partner Matching Under Ex-Ante Uncertainty: From Initial Beliefs to Final Proportions

One-Sided Partner Matching Under Ex-Ante Uncertainty: From Initial Beliefs to Final Proportions

Economics

2026

Man-Chit Chang

This paper introduce different initial private beliefs into a repeated one-side matching markets. In real life matching, judging others based on first impressions is inevitable and these impressions are subjective and maybe inaccurate. We show that, under sufficient learning, each agent eventually become either a permanent solo or a member of a persisting pair. The initial beliefs play an important role because they will affect the opportunity to form pairs and subsequent interactions. Hence, the initial information state will affect the lower bounds of the expected proportions of these eventual outcomes through its effect on the probability that the conditions for each eventual outcomes required are satisfied. We use simulations under specific assumptions about the initial belief distribution and true type distribution to examine how first impressions and population size affect the matching outcomes over a finite horizon. The simulation results reflect how the tight pairing restrictions of the model affect the proportion of agents who remain solo.

Economics, Game Theory, Matching