Equity and Efficiency in Dynamic Matching: Extreme Waitlist Policies
Afshin Nikzad () and
Philipp Strack ()
Additional contact information
Afshin Nikzad: Economics, University of Southern California, Los Angeles, California 90007
Philipp Strack: Economics, Yale University, New Haven, Connecticut 06520
Management Science, 2024, vol. 70, issue 8, 5187-5207
Abstract:
Waitlists are commonly used to allocate scarce resources, such as public housing or organs. Waitlist policies attempt to prioritize agents who wait longer by assigning them priority points (à la first come, first served). We show that such point systems can lead to severe inequality across the agents’ assignment probabilities unless they use randomization. In particular, deterministic point systems lead to a more unequal allocation than any other rule that prioritizes earlier arrivals, an axiom that ensures that agents who wait longer are treated (weakly) better. Among the policies abiding by this axiom, we show that service in random order (SIRO) leads to the most equal allocation. From a utilitarian perspective, we show that the planner faces no trade-off between equity and efficiency when the flow utility from waiting is nonnegative or negative and increasing over time. In these cases, SIRO is also the most efficient policy. However, when the flow cost of waiting increases over time, then the planner may face an efficiency–equity trade-off: SIRO remains the most equitable policy but may not be the most efficient one.
Keywords: dynamic matching; equity; Lorenz order; welfare (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:
Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2023.01212 (application/pdf)
Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.
Export reference: BibTeX
RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan)
HTML/Text
Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:70:y:2024:i:8:p:5187-5207
Access Statistics for this article
More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().