Work

Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets*

Year: 2013

Type: article

Abstract: Accommodating couples has been a long-standing issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A stable matching may not exist when couples are present. This article’s main result is that a stable matching exists when there are relatively few couples and preference lists are sufficiently short relative to market size. We also discuss incentives in markets with couples. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples.

Source: The Quarterly Journal of Economics

DOI: 10.1093/qje/qjt019

Authors: Fuhito Kojima, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth

Institutions: Washington University in St. Louis, Stanford University, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Harvard University

Language: English

Topic: Game Theory and Voting Systems

Subfield: Economics and Econometrics

Field: Economics, Econometrics and Finance

Domain: Social Sciences

SDG: Decent work and economic growth

Open Access status: bronze

Funder: National Science Foundation