Games and Matching Markets

A special issue of Games (ISSN 2073-4336).

Deadline for manuscript submissions: closed (30 November 2012) | Viewed by 13655

Special Issue Editor

Institute for Economic Analysis, CSIC, Campus UAB, 08193 Bellaterra, Barcelona, Spain
Interests: matching theory; market design; game theory; operations research; social choice theory

Special Issue Information

Dear Colleagues,

The publication of the text books by Gusfield and Irving (1989) and Roth and Sotomayor (1990) triggered a literature on a wide variety of matching problems. The abundance of real-life matching markets explains the exponential growth of this literature. Some important examples of matching markets include the assignment of students to universities and dormitories, children to schools, junior doctors to hospital internships, and kidney transplant patients to donors. Using a multi-disciplinary approach, researchers have studied market failures and have proposed practical solutions. Theoretical studies have provided insights in the different properties of matching mechanisms and procedures. Experimental work has been crucial in testing new matching schemes before implementing them in real-life markets. It has become clear that very often real-life settings require an extension of basic models and that apparently innocuous details can have significant impact on the performance of matching mechanisms. For the Special Issue in Games I invite theoretical as well as experimental contributions that deal with features present in real-life matching markets. Possible topics include, but are not to limited to:

- large markets
- preference externalities
- affirmative action
- manipulability

Prof. Dr. Flip Klijn
Guest Editor

Published Papers (2 papers)

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Article
Unraveling Results from Comparable Demand and Supply: An Experimental Investigation
by Muriel Niederle, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Ünver
Games 2013, 4(2), 243-282; https://doi.org/10.3390/g4020243 - 19 Jun 2013
Cited by 37 | Viewed by 8164
Abstract
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willing to make [...] Read more.
Markets sometimes unravel, with offers becoming inefficiently early. Often this is attributed to competition arising from an imbalance of demand and supply, typically excess demand for workers. However this presents a puzzle, since unraveling can only occur when firms are willing to make early offers and workers are willing to accept them. We present a model and experiment in which workers’ quality becomes known only in the late part of the market. However, in equilibrium, matching can occur (inefficiently) early only when there is comparable demand and supply: a surplus of applicants, but a shortage of high quality applicants. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Games and Matching Markets)
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Article
Divorce Costs and Marital Dissolution in a One-to-One Matching Framework With Nontransferable Utilities
by Ismail Saglam
Games 2013, 4(1), 106-124; https://doi.org/10.3390/g4010106 - 20 Mar 2013
Cited by 19 | Viewed by 5205
Abstract
In this paper, we use a two-period one-to-one matching model with incomplete information to examine the effect of changes in divorce costs on marital dissolution. Each individual who has a nontransferable expected utility about the quality of each potential marriage decides whether to [...] Read more.
In this paper, we use a two-period one-to-one matching model with incomplete information to examine the effect of changes in divorce costs on marital dissolution. Each individual who has a nontransferable expected utility about the quality of each potential marriage decides whether to marry or to remain single at the beginning of the first period. Individuals married in the first period learn the qualities of their marriages at the beginning of the second period and then decide whether to stay married or to unilaterally divorce. We show that, for any society, there exist matching environments where the probability of the marital dissolution does not reduce divorce costs under gender-optimal matching rules. In such environments, an allocation effect of divorce costs with an ambiguous sign outweighs an incentive effect that is always negative. We also show that these results may also arise under stable matching rules that are not gender optimal. Full article
(This article belongs to the Special Issue Games and Matching Markets)
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