Article ID | Journal | Published Year | Pages | File Type |
---|---|---|---|---|
957431 | Journal of Economic Theory | 2010 | 18 Pages |
Abstract
One of the oldest matching problems is Gale and Shapley's (1962) [8] “roommates problem”: is there a stable way to assign 2N students into N roommate pairs? Unlike the classic marriage problem or college admissions problem, there need not exist a stable solution to the roommates problem. However, stability ignores the key physical constraint that roommates require a room and is therefore too restrictive. This motivates a new matching problem: matching agents subject to an initial assignment. A particularly important example is kidney exchange where after an assignment has been made, subsequent tests may determine that a patient and donor are incompatible. This paper introduces an efficient algorithm for finding a Pareto improvement starting from any status quo roommates assignment.
Related Topics
Social Sciences and Humanities
Economics, Econometrics and Finance
Economics and Econometrics
Authors
Thayer Morrill,