Economists get geeky on wives and prostitution

I love it when economists apply economic theories to other spheres and Marginal Revolution never disappoints.

Firstly there is this post on modal wives (or husbands) and the number of modal wives is typically greater than or equal to the number of real wives. A modal wife is a woman you would have married if you had met at the right time.

They go on to talk about whether one should keep searching for a modal wife, or one should settle for less than perfect as marriage is based on attitude and compatibility.

MR also links to a Nevada prostitution database where they even have correlation coefficients for many variables!