Transportation matrices with staircase patterns and majorization

We consider some questions concerning transportation matrices with a certain nonzero pattern. For a given staircase pattern we characterize those row sum vectors R and column sum vectors S such that the corresponding class of transportation matrices with the given row and column sums and the given pattern is nonempty. Two versions of this problem are considered. Algorithms for finding matrices in these matrix classes are introduced and, finally, a connection to the notion of majorization is discussed.