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A simple sufficient condition for a unique and student-efficient stable matching in the college admissions problem

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Abstract

Consider the college admissions problem. Let us say that (student and college) preferences are student-oriented iff whenever two students disagree about the ranking of two colleges, each one of the two students is ranked higher by the college he prefers than the other student. We show that when preferences are oriented there is a unique stable matching, and that no other matching, stable or not, is weakly preferred by every student.

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Correspondence to Philip J. Reny.

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Current Version: November 1, 2020. I thank Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Aram Grigoryan, Parag Pathak, Joe Root, Al Roth, and Leeat Yariv for helpful comments. Financial support from the National Science Foundation (SES-1724747) is gratefully acknowledged.

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Reny, P.J. A simple sufficient condition for a unique and student-efficient stable matching in the college admissions problem. Econ Theory Bull 9, 7–9 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s40505-020-00197-2

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s40505-020-00197-2

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