TY  - JOUR
AU  - Kojima,Fuhito
AU  - Pathak,Parag A.
AU  - Roth,Alvin E.
TI  - Matching with Couples: Stability and Incentives in Large Markets
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 16028
PY  - 2010
Y2  - May 2010
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16028
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w16028.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Fuhito Kojima
Stanford University
E-Mail: fuhitokojima1979@gmail.com

Parag Pathak
MIT Department of Economics
50 Memorial Drive
E52-391C
Cambridge, MA 02142
Tel: 617/253-7458
E-Mail: ppathak@mit.edu

Alvin E. Roth
Department of Economics
Stanford University
579 Serra Mall
Stanford, CA 94305
Tel: 650/725-9147
E-Mail: alroth@stanford.edu
AB  - Accommodating couples has been a longstanding issue in the design of centralized labor market clearinghouses for doctors and psychologists, because couples view pairs of jobs as complements. A stable matching may not exist when couples are present. We find conditions under which a stable matching exists with high probability in large markets. We present a mechanism that finds a stable matching with high probability, and which makes truth-telling by all participants an approximate equilibrium. We relate these theoretical results to the job market for psychologists, in which stable matchings exist for all years of the data, despite the presence of couples.
ER  -