Experimental results on the roommate problem

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Working paper
Author/s: 
Elena Molis and Robert F. Veszteg
Issue number: 
2010/11
Publisher: 
CORE
Year: 
2010
We use laboratory experiments to analyze decentralized decision-making in one-sided matching markets. We find that subjects tend to make decisions in line with theoretical models, as their offering and accepting decisions are only guided by the objective of improving upon the status quo. However, isolated individual mistakes, that do not disappear with experience or time, often make theoretically-stable matchings unstable in the laboratory. Markets with incomplete infor- mation are especially prone to this problem.
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