Assigning Refugees to Landlords in Sweden: Efficient Stable Maximum Matchings

Tommy Andersson and Lars Ehlers

No 2016:18, Working Papers from Lund University, Department of Economics

Abstract: The member states of the European Union received 1.2 million first time asylum applications in 2015 (a doubling compared to 2014). Even if asylum will be granted for many of the refugees that made the journey to Europe, several obstacles for successful integration remain. This paper focuses on one of these obstacles, namely the problem of finding housing for refugees once they have been granted asylum. In particular, the focus is restricted to the situation in Sweden during 2015–2016 and it is demonstrated that market design can play an important role in a partial solution to the problem. More specifically, because almost all accommodation options are exhausted in Sweden, the paper investigates a matching system, closely related to the system adopted by the European NGO "Refugees Welcome", and proposes an easy-to-implement mechanism that finds an efficient stable maximum matching. Such matching guarantees that housing is efficiently provided to a maximum number of refugees and that no refugee prefers some landlord to their current match when, at the same time, that specific landlord prefers that refugee to his current match.

Keywords: refugees; forced migration; housing markets; market design; efficient stable maximum matchings (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C71 C78 D71 D78 F22 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 26 pages
Date: 2016-07-18, Revised 2018-08-27
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-gth, nep-mig and nep-ure
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (16)

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