Title
An Experimental Study of Decentralized Matching
Author(s)
Federico Echenique Federico Echenique (Caltech)
Leeat Yariv Leeat Yariv (Caltech)
Abstract
We present an experimental study of decentralized one-to-one matching markets, such as labor or marriage markets. In our experiments, subjects are informed of everyone’s preferences and can make arbitrary non-binding match offers that are realized only when a certain period of market inactivity has elapsed. We find three main results. First, stable matches are the prevalent outcome. Second, in markets with multiple stable matches, the median stable match is selected most frequently. Third, the cardinal representation of ordinal preferences substantially impacts which stable match gets selected. Furthermore, the endogenous dynamic paths that lead to stability exhibit several persistent features.
Creation Date
2013-11
Section URL ID
Paper Number
2013-3
URL
http://lyariv.mycpanel.princeton.edu//papers/ExpDecentralizedMatching.pdf
File Function
Jel
C78, C92, D47
Keyword(s)
Decentralized Matching, Experiments, Market Design
Suppress
false
Series
13