经济学人下载:优化浪漫 恋爱中的经济学(上)

Finance and economics: Free exchange Optimising romance
财经：自由交流，优化浪漫

To find true love, it helps to understand the economic principles underpinning the search.
为找到真爱，理解支撑寻找的经济学原理是有帮助的。

DATING is a treacherous business.
约会是一个有风险的事情。

There may be plenty of fish in the sea, yet many are unhygienic, self-absorbed, disconcertingly attached to ex-fish, or fans of Donald Trump.
人海茫茫，各种各样的人都有。但是大多数都是不讲卫生、自私自恋，尴尬地依附于前任或者是特朗普的粉丝。

Digital dating sites, including a growing array of matchmaking apps, are meant to help.
数字约会网站，包括数量正在不断增加的各种配对app意在帮人们一把。

Their design owes more to hard-nosed economics than it does to the mysteries of the heart.
它们的设计更多的是归功于实用经济学，而不是心灵的秘密。

In a sense, searching for a mate is not so different from hunting for a job.
从一定意义上说，寻找真爱与寻找工作没有什么不一样。

Jobs, like prospective partners, have their strengths and weaknesses, which makes finding the right one a matter of complicated trade-offs.
工作如同是意中人，既有优点也有缺点，这让找到正确的那个成了一件耗时费神之事。

Such exchanges are different from other transactions, in that both parties must be enthusiastic about the match for it to happen.
这种交流不同于其他的交易，双方必须对即将发生的配对充满激情。

A supermarket, in contrast, does not particularly care whose wallet it is draining, nor does the power company agonise about whether a customer is worthy of its watts.
与之相比，超市是不会特别在意自己正在榨取谁的钱包，电力公司也不会对客户是否值自己发的电而烦恼。

Alvin Roth, who won a Nobel prize in economics for his work on market design, made a career of studying such “matching markets”, where supply and demand are not balanced by price.
曾因市场设计研究获得过一次诺贝尔经济学奖的阿尔文·罗斯的专项就是研究此类“配对市场”。在配对市场中，供需的平衡不取决于价格。

Instead, people transact based on information.
相反，人们是基于信息进行交易的。

An apple-seller can nudge down his prices until the whole cart is sold.
一位苹果商贩可能会把价格慢慢降至整筐苹果被售出为止。

Yet if Apple were looking to hire two workers, it would not set a salary so puny that only two people applied.
但是，如果苹果公司要雇佣两位员工，它就不会设置一种适用范围小到只有两个人申请的薪水。

The quality of new hires often matters at least as much as their salaries.
新员工的质量至少经常是与他们的薪水同样重要的。

Mr Roth, who won the prize jointly with Lloyd Shapley in 2012, found that the structure of matching markets made a significant difference in determining who wound up with whom.
曾在2012年与劳埃德·沙普利分享诺奖的罗斯发现，配对市场的结构会在决定谁与谁配对方面产生明显的差异。

Systems designed to elicit people's true preferences generated better matches between hospitals and doctors, for example.
例如，为突出人们的真正喜好而设计出来的系统曾在医院和医生之间产生了较好的配对。

But the entire medical profession has an interest in improving matches, and so can set up a national clearing house to do just that.
但是，整个医疗行业的兴趣在于改进配对，以便能够搭建起一个全国性的交换平台来做这种事。

The lovelorn must instead rely on an array of digital matchmakers.
单恋之人反而必须依赖众多的数字配对者。

Good matches depend on good information.
好的配对取决于好的信息。

Even without digital help, people usually have some inkling of how much they have in common.
即便没有数字的帮助，人们通常也会对双方的共同之处有个大概的认识。

Cosmopolitan strivers move to New York, say, rather than sleepier cities, in part because they will meet other ambitious types with similar interests.
比如说，去大城市打拼的人之所以要去纽约而不是一些沉闷的城市，部分原因就在于他们能在大城市中遇到同样野心勃勃之人。

Within New York, the places people choose to spend their time—whether Yankee Stadium or a yoga studio—determine which sorts of people they come into contact with.
在纽约，人们选择去消磨时间的地方——不管是洋基体育场还是瑜伽馆——决定了他们所遇到的人的类型。

Because it is expensive to live in New York, and to spend time sweating in a yoga studio or swearing in the stands, people in such settings can be reasonably confident those around them are in some sense like-minded.
因为鉴于在纽约生活去瑜伽馆中流汗或是在看台上发泄的成本很高，因而在这种环境下，人们是能够对周围多少都是志同道合的人充满信心的。

But one critical bit of information is missing: whether there is mutual interest.
但是，一个关键的信息在这里被遗漏了：是不是有共同的兴趣。

The act of asking someone out is fraught.
当面邀某人约会的行为是令人担忧的。

In the non-digital world, approaching a potential partner brings the risk of awkwardness or humiliation.
在非数字世界中，接近一个潜在的同伴带来的是尴尬和受辱的风险。

Digital dating reduces this cost dramatically.
数字配对极大地降低了这方面的成本。

Apps like Tinder and Happn, for example, reveal that a user likes another only when the feeling is mutual.
例如，像Tinder和Happn这样的app揭示，用户只在有共同感受的情况下才喜欢另一个用户。