IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/bge/wpaper/156.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Paths to Stability for Matching Markets with Couples

Author

Listed:
  • Bettina Klaus
  • Flip Klijn

Abstract

We study two-sided matching markets with couples and show that for a natural preference domain for couples, the domain of weakly responsive preferences, stable outcomes can always be reached by means of decentralized decision making. Starting from an arbitrary matching, we construct a path of matchings obtained from 'satisfying' blocking coalitions that yields a stable matching. Hence, we establish a generalization of Roth and Vande Vate's (1990) result on path convergence to stability for decentralized singles markets. Furthermore, we show that when stable matchings exist, but preferences are not weakly responsive, for some initial matchings there may not exist any path obtained from 'satisfying' blocking coalitions that yields a stable matching.

Suggested Citation

  • Bettina Klaus & Flip Klijn, 2015. "Paths to Stability for Matching Markets with Couples," Working Papers 156, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:156
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://bw.bse.eu/wp-content/uploads/2020/02/1156-file.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Klaus, Bettina & Klijn, Flip, 2005. "Stable matchings and preferences of couples," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 75-106, March.
    2. Alvin E. Roth, 2002. "The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(4), pages 1341-1378, July.
    3. Jinpeng Ma, 1996. "On randomized matching mechanisms (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 377-381.
    4. Bettina Klaus & Flip Klijn, 2005. "Corrigendum: Stable Matchings and Preferences of Couples," UFAE and IAE Working Papers 653.05, Unitat de Fonaments de l'Anàlisi Econòmica (UAB) and Institut d'Anàlisi Econòmica (CSIC).
    5. Klaus, Bettina & Klijn, Flip & Nakamura, Toshifumi, 2009. "Corrigendum to "Stable matchings and preferences of couples" [J. Econ. Theory 121 (1) (2005) 75-106]," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2227-2233, September.
    6. Roth, Alvin E, 1984. "The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 92(6), pages 991-1016, December.
    7. Roth, Alvin E & Vande Vate, John H, 1990. "Random Paths to Stability in Two-Sided Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 58(6), pages 1475-1480, November.
    8. Diamantoudi, Effrosyni & Miyagawa, Eiichi & Xue, Licun, 2004. "Random paths to stability in the roommate problem," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 48(1), pages 18-28, July.
    9. Bettina Klaus & Flip Klijn & Jordi Massó, 2007. "Some things couples always wanted to know about stable matchings (but were afraid to ask)," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(3), pages 175-184, November.
    10. Roth, Alvin E., 1985. "The college admissions problem is not equivalent to the marriage problem," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 277-288, August.
    11. Elliott Peranson & Alvin E. Roth, 1999. "The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(4), pages 748-780, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Alvin Roth, 2008. "Deferred acceptance algorithms: history, theory, practice, and open questions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(3), pages 537-569, March.
    2. Jay Sethuraman & Chung-Piaw Teo & Liwen Qian, 2006. "Many-to-One Stable Matching: Geometry and Fairness," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 31(3), pages 581-596, August.
    3. Péter Biró & Flip Klijn, 2013. "Matching With Couples: A Multidisciplinary Survey," International Game Theory Review (IGTR), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 15(02), pages 1-18.
    4. Fuhito Kojima & Parag A. Pathak, 2009. "Incentives and Stability in Large Two-Sided Matching Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(3), pages 608-627, June.
    5. Bettina Klaus & Flip Klijn & Jordi Massó, 2007. "Some things couples always wanted to know about stable matchings (but were afraid to ask)," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 11(3), pages 175-184, November.
    6. Benjamín Tello, 2023. "Restricted Complementarity and Paths to Stability in Matching with Couples," CEMLA Working Paper Series 02/2023, CEMLA.
    7. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    8. Roth, Alvin E. & Sonmez, Tayfun & Utku Unver, M., 2005. "Pairwise kidney exchange," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 125(2), pages 151-188, December.
    9. Claus-Jochen Haake & Bettina Klaus, 2010. "Stability and Nash implementation in matching markets with couples," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 69(4), pages 537-554, October.
    10. Hatfield, John William & Kominers, Scott Duke, 2017. "Contract design and stability in many-to-many matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 78-97.
    11. Ata Atay & Sylvain Funck & Ana Mauleon & Vincent Vannetelbosch, 2025. "Matching markets with farsighted couples," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 64(3), pages 465-481, May.
    12. Klaus, Bettina & Klijn, Flip, 2005. "Stable matchings and preferences of couples," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 121(1), pages 75-106, March.
    13. Alfredo Salgado-Torres, 2012. "A simple decentralized matching mechanism in markets with couples," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 32(3), pages 2044-2055.
    14. Tello, Benjamín, 2023. "Restricted complementarity and paths to stability in matching with couples," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 126(C), pages 60-67.
    15. Bettina Klaus & Flip Klijn, 2007. "Fair and efficient student placement with couples," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(2), pages 177-207, October.
    16. Rouzbeh Ghouchani & Szilvia Pápai, 2022. "Preference aggregation for couples," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 59(4), pages 889-923, November.
    17. Ehlers, Lars & Masso, Jordi, 2007. "Incomplete information and singleton cores in matching markets," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 136(1), pages 587-600, September.
    18. Peter Biro & Tamas Fleiner & Rob Irving, 2013. "Matching Couples with Scarf's Algorithm," CERS-IE WORKING PAPERS 1330, Institute of Economics, Centre for Economic and Regional Studies.
    19. Chao Huang, 2021. "Stable matching: an integer programming approach," Papers 2103.03418, arXiv.org, revised Apr 2022.
    20. Hatfield, John William & Kojima, Fuhito, 2010. "Substitutes and stability for matching with contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(5), pages 1704-1723, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D70 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - General

    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:bge:wpaper:156. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Bruno Guallar (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/bargses.html .

    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.