Publications

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

30 Sep 2009
Research & Ideas

Harvard and HBS: The Next 100 Years

experiment" during a time of deep recession. In today's crowded marketplace of MBA programs, Harvard Business School remains distinctive. The intellectual agenda for Harvard Business School must become even more global. In coming... View Details

Keywords: Education

2014
Working Paper

Hidden Substitutes

By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

In this paper, we show that preferences exhibiting some forms of complementarity in fact have an underlying substitutable structure. Specifically, we show that some preferences that are not substitutable in the setting of many-to-one matching with contracts become... View Details

Keywords: Many-to-One Matching; Many-to-Many Matching; Stability; Substitutes; Matching With Contracts; Slot-Specific Priorities; Sherlock; Market Design; Contracts; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

01 Jul 2014
First Look

First Look: July 1

short-term debt. Publisher's link: http://www.people.hbs.edu/shanson/Comparative_Advantage_paper_20140623.pdf August 2013 Management Science Marketplace or Reseller? By: Hagiu, Andrei, and Julian Wright Abstract—Intermediaries can choose... View Details

Keywords: Carmen Nobel

14 May 2013
First Look

First Look: May 14

platforms. Download working paper: https://www.hbs.edu/faculty/Pages/item.aspx?num=40488 Marketplace or Reseller? By: Hagiu, Andrei, and Julian Wright Abstract—An intermediary can choose between functioning as a marketplace, on which suppliers sell... View Details

Keywords: Sean Silverthorne

17 Apr 2017
Research Event

The Most Pressing Issues for Platform Providers in the Sharing Economy

workflow, it’s very difficult to disintermediate,” Easterly said. Panelists also fielded this audience question: How do you overcome the challenges of introducing digital marketplaces in industries with slow technology adoption and rigid... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Service

Article

Matching in Networks with Bilateral Contracts

By: John William Hatfield and Scott Duke Kominers

We introduce a model in which firms trade goods via bilateral contracts which specify a buyer, a seller, and the terms of the exchange. This setting subsumes (many-to-many) matching with contracts, as well as supply chain matching. When firms' relationships do not... View Details

Keywords: Contracts; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Supply Chain

Purchase

19 Sep 2017
Working Paper Summaries

An Invitation to Market Design

.ExternalClass535E8B0AB65740BCB51D3AB82FC0F8CE p.MsoNormal, .ExternalClass535E8B0AB65740BCB51D3AB82FC0F8CE li.MsoNormal, .ExternalClass535E8B0AB65740BCB51D3AB82FC0F8CE div.MsoNormal... View Details

Keywords: by Scott Duke Kominers, Alexander Teytelboym, and Vincent P. Crawford

14 Jun 2017
Working Paper Summaries

Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp

Keywords: by Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth, and Oliver Tercieux; Education

December 2018
Article

Reserve Design: Unintended Consequences and the Demise of Boston's Walk Zones

By: Umut Dur, Scott Duke Kominers, Parag A. Pathak and Tayfun Sönmez

Admissions policies often use reserves to grant certain applicants higher priority for some (but not all) available seats. Boston’s school choice system, for example, reserved half of each school’s seats for local neighborhood applicants while leaving the other half... View Details

Keywords: Neighborhoods; Equal Access; School Choice; Affirmative Action; Desegregation; Marketplace Matching; Fairness; Local Range; Education; Policy

24 Jul 2018
First Look

New Research and Ideas, July 24, 2018

Market Design By: Roth, Alvin E. Abstract—Marketplaces are often small parts of large markets, and both markets and marketplaces come in many varieties. Market design seeks to understand what marketplaces... View Details

Keywords: Dina Gerdeman

14 Dec 2015
Research & Ideas

Airbnb Hosts Discriminate Against African-American Guests

many online marketplaces of the so-called sharing economy. “To facilitate trust, many online platforms like Airbnb encourage sellers to provide personal profiles and even to post pictures of themselves” says HBS Associate Professor Ben... View Details

Keywords: by Carmen Nobel; Accommodations; Web Services

May 2016
Article

Matching with Slot-Specific Priorities: Theory

By: Scott Duke Kominers and Tayfun Sönmez

We introduce a two-sided, many-to-one matching with contracts model in which agents with unit demand match to branches that may have multiple slots available to accept contracts. Each slot has its own linear priority order over contracts; a branch chooses contracts by... View Details

Keywords: Matching With Contracts; Stability; Strategy-proofness; School Choice; Affirmative Action; Airline Seat Upgrades; Contracts; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability

Article

Preference Signaling in Matching Markets

Many labor markets share three stylized facts: employers cannot give full attention to all candidates, candidates are ready to provide information about their preferences for particular employers, and employers value and are prepared to act on this information. In this... View Details

Keywords: Signaling; Matching; Cheap Talk; Congestion; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Communication; Job Search

2007
Working Paper

The New Market for Federal Judicial Law Clerks

By: Christopher Avery, Christine Jolls, Richard Posner and Alvin E. Roth

In the past, judges have often hired applicants for judicial clerkships as early as the beginning of the second year of law school for positions commencing approximately two years down the road. In the new hiring regime for federal judicial law clerks, by contrast,... View Details

Keywords: Law; Education; Employment; Selection and Staffing; Marketplace Matching

June 2023
Exercise

Clash of Two Giants Simulation Exercise Instructions

By: Feng Zhu and Marco Iansiti

Many markets are organized around platforms that connect consumers with complimentary applications and services. These platforms are two-sided because both sides - consumers and those providing applications or services - need access to the same platform to interact. A... View Details

Keywords: Platform Strategies; Technology Platform; Customer Acquisition; Network Effects; Digital Platforms; Marketplace Matching; Strategy

Purchase

February 2024
Article

An Economic Framework for Vaccine Prioritization

By: Mohammad Akbarpour, Eric Budish, Piotr Dworczak and Scott Duke Kominers

We propose an economic framework for determining the optimal allocation of a scarce supply of vaccines that become gradually available during a public health crisis, such as the Covid-19 pandemic. Agents differ in observable and unobservable characteristics, and the... View Details

Keywords: Vaccine; Fairness; Public Finance; Public Goods; Allocation Problems; Allocative Efficiency; Allocation Rules; Social Welfare; Pandemics; Inequality; COVID-19; COVID-19 Pandemic; Public Sector; Resource Allocation; Market Design; Marketplace Matching; Public Administration Industry

SSRN

2017
Working Paper

Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp

By: Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Yeon-Koo Che, Parag A. Pathak, Alvin E. Roth and Oliver Tercieux

In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp. The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on Top... View Details

Keywords: Education; Decision Choices and Conditions; Marketplace Matching; Mathematical Methods; Design

Article

On the Correspondence of Contracts to Salaries in (Many-to-Many) Matching

By: Scott Duke Kominers

In this note, I extend the work of Echenique (2012) to show that a model of many-to-many matching with contracts may be embedded into a model of many-to-many matching with wage bargaining whenever (1) all agentsʼ preferences are substitutable and (2) the matching with... View Details

Keywords: Many-to-Many Matching; Stability; Substitutes; Contract Design; Unitarity; Market Design; Contracts; Marketplace Matching; Balance and Stability; Economics