The Centre for Biostatistics in conjunction with the Department of
Mathematics and Statistics invite you to the fourth seminar in their
autumn series.
Friday, November 2nd, 2:00pm
Room C0070
Steve Alpern
London School of Economics
Two-sided matching games
Abstract: Problems of matching have long been studied in the operations
research literature (assignment problem, secretary problem, stable
marriage problem) and the biological literature (mating behaviour). All
of these consider a centralized mechanism whereby a single decision
maker chooses a complete matching which optimizes some criterion. We
analyze a more realistic scenario in which members of the two groups
(buyers-sellers, employers-workers, males-females) randomly meet each
other in pairs (interviews, dates) over time and form couples if there
is mutual agreement to do so. Various types of preferences may be
considered e.g. preferences may be common (i.e. all females agree on the
attractiveness of males) or homotypic (an individual prefers similar
individuals). We consider a model in which preferences are common and
the two groups are of different sizes. It is shown that multiple
equilibria may exist.
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