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What Matchings Can Be Stable? The Testable Implications of Matching Theory

Division of the Humanities and Social Sciences, California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California 91125
fede{at}caltech.edu

This paper studies the falsifiability of two-sided matching theory when agents' preferences are unknown. A collection of matchings is rationalizable if there are preferences for the agents involved so that the matchings are stable. We show that there are nonrationalizable collections of matchings; hence, the theory is falsifiable. We also characterize the rationalizable collections of matchings, which leads to a test of matching theory in the spirit of revealed-preference tests of individual optimizing behavior.

Key Words: stable matchings; revealed preference; inverse optimization
History: Received: November 9, 2006; revision received: October 23, 2007;