Ex-ante efficiency in assignments with seniority rights
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Article
Review of Economic Design
Issue number:
March 2017, Volume 21, Issue 1
Publisher:
Elsevier
Year:
2017
Journal pages:
33-48
We study random assignment economies with expected-utility agents, each of them eventually obtaining a single object. We focus attention on assignment problems that must respect object-invariant (or uniform) weak priorities such as seniority rights in student residence assignment. We propose the sequential pseudomarket mechanism: the set of agents is partitioned into ordered priority groups that are called in turns to participate in a pseudomarket for the remaining objects. SP is characterized by the concept of consistent weak ex-ante efficiency (CWEE), that is, weak ex-ante efficiency complemented by consistency to economy reduction. Moreover, it is shown that CWEE generically implies ex-ante efficiency.