Smith and Rawls Share a Room

Bettina Klaus () and Flip Klijn

No 315, Working Papers from Barcelona School of Economics

Abstract: We consider one-to-one matching (roommate) problems in which agents (students) can either be matched as pairs or remain single. The aim of this paper is twofold. First, we review a key result for roommate problems (the "lonely wolf" theorem) for which we provide a concise and elementary proof. Second, and related to the title of this paper, we show how the often incompatible concepts of stability (represented by the political economist Adam Smith) and fairness (represented by the political philosopher John Rawls) can be reconciled for roommate problems.

Keywords: fairness; stability; roommate problem (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C62 C78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2015-09
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

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Related works:
Working Paper: Smith and Rawls Share a Room (2007)
Working Paper: Smith and Rawls share a room (2007)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bge:wpaper:315

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