Stable Matching Mechanisms are Not Obviously Strategy-Proof

Itai Ashlagi; Yannai A. Gonczarowski

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arXiv · 1511.00452

Stable Matching Mechanisms are Not Obviously Strategy-Proof

Itai Ashlagi·Yannai A. Gonczarowski

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Abstract

Many two-sided matching markets, from labor markets to school choice programs, use a clearinghouse based on the applicant-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm, which is well known to be strategy-proof for the applicants. Nonetheless, a growing amount of empirical evidence reveals that applicants misrepresent their preferences when this mechanism is used. This paper shows that no mechanism that implements a stable matching is "obviously strategy-proof" for any side of the market, a stronger incentive property than strategy-proofness that was introduced by Li (2017). A stable mechanism that is obviously strategy-proof for applicants is introduced for the case in which agents on the other side have acyclical preferences.

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Itai Ashlagi, Yannai A. Gonczarowski. 2018-07-18. Stable Matching Mechanisms are Not Obviously Strategy-Proof. https://arxiv.org/abs/1511.00452

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