Exchange of indivisible goods and indifferences: the Top Trading Absorbing Sets mechanisms

Jorge Alcalde-Unzu () and Elena Molis

No 2009062, LIDAM Discussion Papers CORE from Université catholique de Louvain, Center for Operations Research and Econometrics (CORE)

Abstract: There is a wide range of economic problems involving the exchange of indivisible goods without monetary transfers, starting from the housing market model of the seminal paper of Shapley and Scarf [10] and including other problems like the kidney exchange or the school choice problems. For many of these models, the classical solution is the application of an algorithm/mechanism called Top Trading Cycles, attributed to David Gale, which satisfies good properties for the case of strict preferences. In this paper, we propose a family of mechanisms, called Top Trading Absorbing Sets mechanisms, that generalizes the Top Trading Cycles for the general case in which individuals can report indifferences, and preserves all its desirable properties.

Keywords: housing market; indifferences; top trading cycles; absorbing sets (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 C78 D71 D78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2009-10-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth and nep-ure
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Exchange of indivisible goods and indifferences: The Top Trading Absorbing Sets mechanisms (2011)
Working Paper: Exchange of indivisible goods and indifferences: the top trading absorbing sets mechanisms (2011)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:cor:louvco:2009062

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