IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/the/publsh/6699.html

The large and likely inefficiency of stable matching mechanisms

Author

Listed:
  • Ortega, Josue

    (Department of Economics, Queen's University Belfast)

  • Ziegler, Gabriel

    (Department of Economics, Free University Berlin)

  • Arribillaga, R. Pablo

    (Instituto de Matemática Aplicada San Luis, Universidad Nacional de San Luis and CONICET)

  • Zhao, Geng

    (Department of Electrical Engineering and Computer Science, University of California Berkeley)

Abstract

We prove that any stable matching mechanism suffers from systematic inefficiency of striking magnitude: in large random markets, any stable allocation is Pareto-inefficient with high probability, and almost all students can simultaneously improve their placements without harming anyone else. We establish this result by showing that the envy digraph generated by the student-proposing Deferred Acceptance mechanism contains a unique giant strongly connected component, implying that nearly all students are improvable via trading cycles. Finally, we show that every maximal cycle packing covers almost all students, revealing a surprising asymptotic equivalence among all efficient mechanisms that Pareto-dominate DA.

Suggested Citation

  • Ortega, Josue & Ziegler, Gabriel & Arribillaga, R. Pablo & Zhao, Geng, 0. "The large and likely inefficiency of stable matching mechanisms," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society.
    • Handle: RePEc:the:publsh:6699
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://econtheory.org/ojs/index.php/te/article/viewForthcomingFile/6699/45799/1
    File Function: Working paper version. Paper will be copyedited and typeset before publication.
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:the:publsh:6699. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Editor Theoretical Economics The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Editor Theoretical Economics to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://econtheory.org .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.