DOI link to open access article:
Respect for Improvements and Comparative Statics in Matching Markets
Scott Duke Kominers
Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design
Volume 9, issue 1, pages 83-104 (December 2024)
doi: 10.22574/jmid.2024.12.005
One of the oldest results in the theory of two-sided matching is the entry comparative static, which shows that under the Gale-Shapley deferred acceptance algorithm, adding a new agent to one side of the market makes all the agents on the other side weakly better off. Here, we give a new proof of the entry comparative static, by way of a well-known property of deferred acceptance called respect for improvements. Our argument extends to yield comparative static results in more general settings, such as matching with slot-specific preferences.
Keywords: Matching, market entry, respect for improvements.
JEL Classification Numbers: C78, D47, D82.