2015/11/02 by Itai Ashlagi, Yannai A. Gonczarowski, Ashlagi, Itai +1 · 3 citations
Decision Sciences · Economics, Econometrics and Finance · #Auction Theory and Applications #Computer Science and Game Theory (cs.GT) #FOS: Computer and information sciences #Game Theory and Voting Systems
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.1511.00452
openalex publication_date 2015/11/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
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.