Economics 285

Instructers: Muriel Niederle and Fuhito Kojima


Time and Location (attention: changed from the originally announced ones)

Time: Monday& Wednesday, 11-12:50

Location: room 240-110 (building 240, room 110)


Syllabus



Lecture notes


Classes 1, 2 (Sept. 21 and 23), Basic Theory of Two-Sided Matching


Class 3 (Sept. 28), Design of Two-Sided Matching Markets


Class 4, part 1, part 2 (Sept. 20)


Class 5


Class 6


Class 7


Class 8 (Oct. 14), House Allocation Problems


Class 9 (Oct. 19), Kidney Exchange


Class 10 (Oct. 21) School Choice (1)


Class 11 (Oct. 26) Many-to-Many Matching with Contracts (Guest lecture by John William Hatfield)


Class 12 (Oct. 28) School Choice (2)


Class 13 (Nov. 2) Random Assignment (1)


Class 14 (Nov. 4) Random Assignment (2)


Class 15 (Nov. 9)


Class 16 (Nov. 11)


Class 17 (Nov. 16)


Class 18 (Nov. 18) Boston Continued (Muriel), Axioms for School Choice (Fuhito)


See Muriel's webpage

http://www.stanford.edu/~niederle/MarketDesign.html

for other slides.



Announcements


Final Paper Suggested length of the final paper is between 10 to 20 pages but it can vary within a reasonable limit as long as content is interesting. It needs to contain an original research idea, but having a literature review as part of the paper is very welcome (actually I think it is important to put your research idea clearly in the context of the literature). Because there is limited time, the paper does not need to have completed results as long as you have an interesting question and describe a research approach convincingly. Coauthoring a paper is allowed. The deadline is December 11th (Friday). Please send an email attachment to both Muriel and me, and I will send a confirmation upon receiving the file (so inquire if you don't get a response by December 12th).


Presentation in the Final Class Muriel and I would like each of you to give short presentations on the last day of the class, December 2nd (Wednesday).

Please give a short summary of your final project for the class. Each presentation is 10 minutes long.


We encourage you to set up appointments with Muriel and/or Fuhito to discuss your final project at an early stage.

Send us an email.


Second Assignment The second assignment is writing a referee report. The deadline is November 11th (Wednesday) in class. Write a short summary of the paper and then give critical evaluation. In addition to the typical referee report (which all of you wrote pretty nicely last time), this time we want you to have a section (1 page or so) that specifically discusses potential future research directions. We don't have a rigid page limit, but the suggested length is 3-5 pages. Choose one paper from below and write a report:


Abdulkadiroglu, Pathak, Roth and Sonmez, Changing the Boston School Choice Mechanism: Strategy-proofness as Equal Acces, mimeo


Pathak and Sonmez, Comparing Mechanisms by their Vulnerability to Manipulation, mimeo


Kesten, An Alternative Mechanism Design Approach to School Choice in the United States, mimeo


Athanassoglou and Sethuraman, House Allocation with Fractional Endowments, mimeo.



First Assignment The first assignment is writing a referee report. The deadline is October 26th (Monday) in class. Write a short summary of the paper and then give critical evaluation, in pretty much the same way as in a real referee report. We don't have a rigid page limit, but the suggested length is 2-4 pages. Choose one paper from below and write a report:


Utku Unver, Dynamic Kidney Exchange, Review of Economic Studies, forthcoming.


Marek Pycia and Utku Unver, A Theory of House Allocation and Exchange Mechanisms, mimeo.


Aytek Erdil and Haluk Ergin, Two-sided Matching with Indifferences, mimeo.


Atila Abdulkadiroglu and Tayfun Sonmez, "Random Serial Dictatorship and the Core from Random Endowments in House Allocation Problems”, Econometrica 66: 689-701, May 1998.