19 Mar 2018Working Paper Summaries

Lone Wolves in Competitive Equilibria

by Ravi Jagadeesan, Scott Duke Kominers, and Ross Rheingans-Yoo

The Lone Wolf Theorem states that any agent who is unmatched in one stable partnership assignment is unmatched in every stable assignment. This new study in matching theory broadens the Lone Wolf Theorem to exchange economies, with implications for the strategy-proof negotiation of job contracts.

Author Abstract

This paper develops a class of equilibrium-independent predictions of competitive equilibrium with indivisibilities. Specifically, we prove an analogue of the “Lone Wolf Theorem” of classical matching theory, showing that when utility is perfectly transferable, any agent who does not participate in trade in one competitive equilibrium must receive her autarky payoff in every competitive equilibrium. Our results extend to approximate equilibria and to settings in which utility is only approximately transferable.