Publications

SSRN

17 Sep 2011
HBS Seminar

Matching Market Prices, Analysts' Earnings and Target Price Forecasts, and Estimating the Implied Expected Rate of Return on Equity Capital

May 2021
Article

Stability, Strategy-Proofness, and Cumulative Offer Mechanisms

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp

We consider the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts, where firms may demand multiple contracts, but each worker desires at most one contract. We introduce three novel conditions—observable substitutability, observable size monotonicity, and... View Details

Keywords: Matching With Contracts; Stability; Strategy-proofness; Substitutability; Size Monotonicity; Cumulative Offer Mechanism; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

2015
Working Paper

Stability, Strategy-Proofness, and Cumulative Offer Mechanisms

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers and Alexander Westkamp

We consider the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts, where firms may demand multiple contracts but each worker desires at most one contract. We introduce three novel conditions—observable substitutability, observable size monotonicity,... View Details

Keywords: Matching With Contracts; Stability; Strategy-proofness; Substitutability; Size Monotonicity; Cumulative Offer Mechanism; Contracts; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

Article

Testing Substitutability

By: John William Hatfield, Nicole Immorlica and Scott Duke Kominers

We provide an algorithm for testing the substitutability of a length-N preference relation over a set of contracts X in time O(|X|3⋅N3). Access to the preference relation is essential for this result: We show that a substitutability-testing algorithm with access only... View Details

Keywords: Substitutability; Matching; Communication Complexity; Preference Elicitation; Marketplace Matching; Communication; Mathematical Methods; Economics

Purchase

September 2019
Article

Trading Networks with Frictions

By: Tamás Fleiner, Ravi Jagadeesan, Zsuzsanna Jankó and Alexander Teytelboym

We show how frictions and continuous transfers jointly affect equilibria in a model of matching in trading networks. Our model incorporates distortionary frictions such as transaction taxes and commissions. When contracts are fully substitutable for firms, competitive... View Details

Keywords: Trading Networks; Frictions; Competitive Equilibrium; Matching With Contracts; Stability; Trail Stability

May 18, 2012
Article

Randomized Government Safety Inspections Reduce Worker Injuries with No Detectable Job Loss

By: David I Levine, Michael W. Toffel and Matthew S. Johnson

Controversy surrounds occupational health and safety regulators, with some observers claiming that workplace regulations damage firms' competitiveness and destroy jobs and others arguing that they make workplaces safer at little cost to employers and employees. We... View Details

Keywords: Regulation; Occupational Safety; Evaluation; Regression; Matching; Difference In Differences; Safety; Health; Working Conditions; Governing Rules, Regulations, and Reforms; Competitive Advantage; Performance; Manufacturing Industry; California

January 2021
Article

Chain Stability in Trading Networks

By: John William Hatfield, Scott Duke Kominers, Alexandru Nichifor, Michael Ostrovsky and Alexander Westkamp

We show that in general trading networks with bilateral contracts, a suitably adapted chain stability concept (Ostrovsky, 2008) is equivalent to stability (Hatfield and Kominers, 2012; Hatfield et al., 2013) if all agents' preferences are fully substitutable and... View Details

Keywords: Matching; Trading Networks; Chain Stability; Stability; Competitive Equilibria; Full Substitutability; Laws Of Aggregate Supply And Demand; Contracts; Market Design; Balance and Stability

The platforms Shein and Temu match consumer demand and factory output, bringing Chinese production to the rest of the world. The companies have remade fast fashion, but their pioneering approach has the potential to go far beyond retail by linking diverse small... View Details

2009
Working Paper

Farsighted Stability for Roommate Markets

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus, Flip Klijn and Markus Walzl

Using a bi-choice graph technique (Klaus and Klijn, 2009), we show that a matching for a roommate market indirectly dominates another matching if and only if no blocking pair of the former is matched in the latter (Proposition 1). Using this characterization of... View Details

Keywords: Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Balance and Stability

2009
Working Paper

Smith and Rawls Share a Room: Stability and Medians

By: Bettina-Elisabeth Klaus and Flip Klijn

We consider one-to-one, one-sided matching (roommate) problems in which agents can either be matched as pairs or remain single. We introduce a so-called bi-choice graph for each pair of stable matchings and characterize its structure. Exploiting this structure we... View Details

Keywords: Fairness; One-Sided Platforms; Two-Sided Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Balance and Stability

26 Nov 2001
Research & Ideas

How Toyota Turns Workers Into Problem Solvers

joint venture with Toyota called NUMMI, approximately fifteen years ago. However, despite Toyota's openness and the genuinely honest efforts by other companies over many years to emulate Toyota, no one had yet matched Toyota in terms of... View Details

Keywords: by Sarah Jane Johnston; Manufacturing; Transportation; Auto

2008
Working Paper

Unraveling Yields Inefficient Matchings: Evidence from Post-season College Football Bowls

By: Guillaume R. Frechette, Alvin E. Roth and M. Utku Unver

Many markets have "unraveled" and experienced inefficient, early, dispersed transactions, and subsequently developed institutions to delay transaction timing. However, it has previously proved difficult to measure and identify the resulting efficiency gains. Prior to... View Details

Keywords: Games, Gaming, and Gambling; Television Entertainment; Market Timing; Market Transactions; Marketplace Matching; Sports Industry

Al Roth is the George Gund Professor of Economics and Business Administration in the Department of Economics at Harvard University, and in the Harvard Business School. His research, teaching, and consulting interests are in game theory, experimental economics, and... View Details

Keywords: e-commerce industry; education industry; health care; information; internet; legal services

2009
Working Paper

Social Influence Given (Partially) Deliberate Matching: Career Imprints in the Creation of Academic Entrepreneurs

By: Pierre Azoulay, Christopher C. Liu and Toby E. Stuart

Actors often match with associates on a small set of dimensions that matter most for the particular relationship at hand. In so doing, they are exposed to unanticipated social influences because counterparts have more interests, attitudes, and preferences than would-be... View Details

Keywords: Entrepreneurship; Patents; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Science-Based Business; Power and Influence; Social and Collaborative Networks; Biotechnology Industry

09 Jan 2012
Research & Ideas

Location, Location, Location: The Strategy of Place

When companies thrive in their home base, temptation can be great to expand to new locations, either across town or around the world. The problem: Many companies think of location strategy as a short-term checkers match rather than as a... View Details

Keywords: by Dina Gerdeman

June 2010
Article

Quality Management and Job Quality: How the ISO 9001 Standard for Quality Management Systems Affects Employees and Employers

By: David I. Levine and Michael W. Toffel

Several studies have examined how the ISO 9001 Quality Management System standard predicts changes in organizational outcomes such as profits. This is the first large-scale study to explore how employee outcomes such as employment, earnings, and health and safety... View Details

Keywords: Quality; Management; Standards; Employees; Wages; Organizations; Profit; Safety; Health; Policy

2007
Working Paper

The Effects of a Centralized Clearinghouse on Job Placement, Wages, and Hiring Practices

By: Muriel Niederle and Alvin E. Roth

New gastroenterologists participated in a labor market clearinghouse (a "match") from 1986 through the late 1990's, after which the match was abandoned. This provides an opportunity to study the effects of a match, by observing the differences in the outcomes and... View Details

Keywords: Health; Employment; Marketplace Matching; Selection and Staffing; Job Offer; Compensation and Benefits; Health Industry

May 1997 (Revised May 2004)
Case

Precision Worldwide, Inc.

By: William J. Bruns Jr.

A competitor has developed and introduced a superior product that is less costly to manufacture. Precision Worldwide must decide whether to match the competitor's product, when to do so, and how to price, given that it holds a large inventory of its now inferior... View Details

Keywords: Decision Making; Price; Cost; Competition