IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hbs/wpaper/19-011.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Bundling Incentives in (Many-to-Many) Matching with Contracts

Author

Listed:
  • Jonathan Ma

    (Harvard University)

  • Scott Duke Kominers

    (Harvard Business School, Entrepreneurial Management Unit)

Abstract

In many-to-many matching with contracts, the way in which contracts are specified can affect the set of stable equilibrium outcomes. Consequently, agents may be incentivized to modify the set of contracts upfront. We consider one simple way in which agents may do so: unilateral bundling, in which a single agent links multiple contracts with the same counterparty together. We show that essentially no stable matching mechanism eliminates incentives for unilateral bundling. Moreover, we find that unilateral bundling can sometimes lead to Pareto improvement?and other times produces market power that makes one agent better off at the expense of others.

Suggested Citation

  • Jonathan Ma & Scott Duke Kominers, 2018. "Bundling Incentives in (Many-to-Many) Matching with Contracts," Harvard Business School Working Papers 19-011, Harvard Business School.
    • Handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:19-011
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.hbs.edu/faculty/pages/download.aspx?name=19-011.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Avinatan Hassidim & Assaf Romm & Ran I. Shorrer, 2017. "Redesigning the Israeli Psychology Master's Match," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(5), pages 205-209, May.
    2. Crawford, Vincent P & Knoer, Elsie Marie, 1981. "Job Matching with Heterogeneous Firms and Workers," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 49(2), pages 437-450, March.
    3. Klaus, Bettina & Walzl, Markus, 2009. "Stable many-to-many matchings with contracts," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 45(7-8), pages 422-434, July.
    4. , & ,, 2006. "A theory of stability in many-to-many matching markets," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 1(2), pages 233-273, June.
    5. Klaus, Bettina & Dimitrov, Dinko & Haake, Claus-Jochen, 2006. "Bundling in exchange markets with indivisible goods," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 93(1), pages 106-110, October.
    6. Ausubel Lawrence M & Milgrom Paul R, 2002. "Ascending Auctions with Package Bidding," The B.E. Journal of Theoretical Economics, De Gruyter, vol. 1(1), pages 1-44, August.
    7. Tayfun Sönmez, 2013. "Bidding for Army Career Specialties: Improving the ROTC Branching Mechanism," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 121(1), pages 186-219.
    8. John William Hatfield & Paul R. Milgrom, 2005. "Matching with Contracts," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(4), pages 913-935, September.
    9. Kominers, Scott Duke, 2012. "On the correspondence of contracts to salaries in (many-to-many) matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 984-989.
    10. Hatfield, John William & Kominers, Scott Duke, 2017. "Contract design and stability in many-to-many matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 78-97.
    11. Tayfun Sönmez & Tobias B. Switzer, 2013. "Matching With (Branch‐of‐Choice) Contracts at the United States Military Academy," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 81(2), pages 451-488, March.
    12. Roth, Alvin E, 1984. "Stability and Polarization of Interests in Job Matching," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(1), pages 47-57, January.
    13. Kelso, Alexander S, Jr & Crawford, Vincent P, 1982. "Job Matching, Coalition Formation, and Gross Substitutes," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 50(6), pages 1483-1504, November.
    14. Hatfield, John William & Kominers, Scott Duke & Nichifor, Alexandru & Ostrovsky, Michael & Westkamp, Alexander, 2019. "Full substitutability," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 14(4), November.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Hatfield, John William & Kominers, Scott Duke, 2017. "Contract design and stability in many-to-many matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 78-97.
    2. Antonio Romero-Medina & Matteo Triossi, 2023. "Take-it-or-leave-it contracts in many-to-many matching markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 75(2), pages 591-623, February.
    3. Kominers, Scott Duke, 2012. "On the correspondence of contracts to salaries in (many-to-many) matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 984-989.
    4. Scott Duke Kominers & Alexander Teytelboym & Vincent P Crawford, 2017. "An invitation to market design," Oxford Review of Economic Policy, Oxford University Press and Oxford Review of Economic Policy Limited, vol. 33(4), pages 541-571.
    5. Tamás Fleiner & Ravi Jagadeesan & Zsuzsanna Jankó & Alexander Teytelboym, 2019. "Trading Networks With Frictions," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 87(5), pages 1633-1661, September.
    6. Kominers, Scott Duke & Hatfield, John William & Nichifor, Alexandru & Ostrovsky, Michael & Westkamp, Alexander, 2021. "Chain stability in trading networks," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 16(1), January.
    7. Schlegel, Jan Christoph, 2020. "Equivalent choice functions and stable mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 41-53.
    8. Tam'as Fleiner & Zsuzsanna Jank'o & Akihisa Tamura & Alexander Teytelboym, 2015. "Trading Networks with Bilateral Contracts," Papers 1510.01210, arXiv.org, revised May 2018.
    9. Kadam, Sangram Vilasrao, 2017. "Unilateral substitutability implies substitutable completability in many-to-one matching with contracts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 56-68.
    10. Klijn, Flip & Yazıcı, Ayşe, 2014. "A many-to-many ‘rural hospital theorem’," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 54(C), pages 63-73.
    11. Yenmez, M. Bumin, 2018. "A college admissions clearinghouse," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 176(C), pages 859-885.
    12. Fisher, James C.D., 2020. "Existence of stable allocations in matching markets with infinite contracts: A topological approach," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 91(C), pages 136-140.
    13. Bando, Keisuke & Hirai, Toshiyuki & Zhang, Jun, 2021. "Substitutes and stability for many-to-many matching with contracts," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 503-512.
    14. Herings, P. Jean-Jacques, 2024. "Expectational equilibria in many-to-one matching models with contracts," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 216(C).
    15. Dimakopoulos, Philipp D. & Heller, C.-Philipp, 2019. "Matching with waiting times: The German entry-level labor market for lawyers," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 289-313.
    16. Peter Chen & Michael Egesdal & Marek Pycia & M. Bumin Yenmez, 2021. "Quantile Stable Mechanisms," Games, MDPI, vol. 12(2), pages 1-9, May.
    17. Hatfield, John William & Kominers, Scott Duke, 2015. "Multilateral matching," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 156(C), pages 175-206.
    18. Jagadeesan, Ravi & Kominers, Scott Duke & Rheingans-Yoo, Ross, 2018. "Strategy-proofness of worker-optimal matching with continuously transferable utility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 287-294.
    19. Schlegel, Jan Christoph, 2015. "Contracts versus salaries in matching: A general result," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 159(PA), pages 552-573.
    20. Eliana Pepa Risma, 2022. "Matching with contracts: calculation of the complete set of stable allocations," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 93(3), pages 449-461, October.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Matching with contracts; Contract design; Bundling-proofness; Substitutability;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C62 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Mathematical Methods; Programming Models; Mathematical and Simulation Modeling - - - Existence and Stability Conditions of Equilibrium
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D44 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Auctions
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:hbs:wpaper:19-011. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: HBS (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/harbsus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.