We turn now to a different class of questions, which will require different kinds of models and theories. In the previous sections we investigated the marriage market by exploring the kind of matchings we might expect to observe. Now we will investigate how we should expect individual agents to behave. Specifically, we will want to know to what extent it is wise for men and women to be frank about their preferences for possible mates, and how we can expect them to act in the process of courtship and marriage. Lest the analysis seem a little cold-blooded at times, it is good to remember that our primary interest here is in a simple model of labor markets, and that the phenomena we will be studying can perhaps better be thought of as the courtship that takes place between potential employers and employees. But for simplicity we consider these questions first in the context of the marriage problem, and defer to later chapters more realistic models in which firms may employ more than one worker.

To address these questions of individual behavior, we need to model the decisions that individuals may be called upon to make in the course of a marriage market. We have so far considered only the general rules of the game, which state that for a marriage to take place between some man m and woman w, it is both necessary and sufficient that the two of them agree. These rules are reflected in our definition of a stable matching. But these general rules might be implemented by many different particular procedures. These particular procedures, which constitute the detailed rules of the game, will determine what specific decisions each agent faces. They will determine how an agent goes about making his preferences known, and the order in which decisions are taken. They will, in short, be a description of the mechanics of the market.