Designing Matching Markets

In the last 20 years, the study of matching markets has seen great innovations and marked progress. The theory has matured to a point where matching theorists are able to make policy suggestions for real-life markets. The theory is supplemented by experiments examining how to operate such markets. Notable applications are matching markets such as medical labor markets for interns, college admissions procedures, school choice programs, social housing assignments, and kidney exchange programs for patients all over the world. The successful application of this field of research to actual markets was further acknowledged in 2012 when the Nobel prizes in Economic Sciences were awarded to economists Alvin E. Roth and Lloyd S. Shapley for their contribution to this field. The emerging field of Matching Market Design aims to design real-life markets, based on theoretical findings and experimental results, with a high concern for efficiency and fairness.

The WZB is planning an international conference on matching markets. The conference, starting in the afternoon of August 28, 2014, and ending on August 29, 2014, will take place at the WZB in Berlin and is organized by Dorothea Kübler (WZB) and Morimitsu Kurino (WZB).

The first aim of the workshop is to bring together excellent leading economists from the US, Europe, and Japan to present and discuss their latest research. The second aim is to strengthen the mutual interaction between theory and experiments. Finally, the workshop aims to further strengthen the field of matching market design and experimental economics in Berlin and identify new research perspectives.