Robust Stability in Matching Markets∗

Fuhito Kojima†
February 17, 2009

Abstract
This paper studies a recent stability concept in matching markets
between schools and students (Chakraborty, Citanna, and Ostrovsky,
2007). A mechanism is robustly stable if it is stable, strategy-proof
and also immune to a combined manipulation, where a student first
misreports her preferences and then blocks the matching that is pro-
duced by the mechanism. First, we show an impossibility result: Even
when school priorities are publicly known and only students can be-
have strategically, there is no robustly stable mechanism. Our main
result characterizes the market conditions under which a robustly sta-
ble mechanism exists. Specifically, we show that there exists a ro-
bustly stable mechanism if and only if the priority structure of schools
is acyclic (Ergin, 2002), and in that case, the student-optimal stable
mechanism is the unique robustly stable mechanism.
Journal of Economic Literature Classification Numbers: C71, C78,
D71, D78, J44.
Key Words: matching, stability, strategy-proofness, robust stabil-
ity, acyclicity.

1 Introduction
Matching theory has influenced the design of labor markets and student
assignment systems.1 Stability plays a central role in the theory: A matching
∗
I am grateful to Eric Budish, Guillaume Haeringer, Michael Ostrovsky, Yuki Takagi,
Kentaro Tomoeda, Alex Westkamp, Yosuke Yasuda and especially Al Roth for insightful
comments.
†
Cowles Foundation, Yale University, 30 Hillhouse Avenue, New Haven, CT 06510,
fuhitokojima1979@gmail.com.
1
Roth and Sotomayor (1990) surveys the early literature. A more recent advancement
is surveyed by Roth (2008) and Sönmez and Ünver (2009).

1
is stable if there is no individual agent who prefers being unmatched to
being assigned to her allocation in the matching, and there is no pair of
agents who prefer being assigned to each other to being assigned to their
respective allocations in the matching. In real-world applications, empirical
studies have shown that stable mechanisms often succeed whereas unstable
ones often fail.2
In recent years, incentive properties of stable mechanisms have attracted
much attention. Roth (1982) shows that any stable mechanism is manipula-
ble. However, if preferences of one side of the market is common knowledge,
as in school choice (Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez, 2003) where school priori-
ties are exogenously given by the law, the student-optimal stable mechanism
is both strategy-proof and stable (Dubins and Freedman, 1981; Roth, 1982).
Indeed, the student-optimal stable mechanism has been adopted in practi-
cal assignment problems, such as student assignment in New York City and
Boston and the National Resident Matching Market.
However, much of the previous analysis has overlooked further possibility
of manipulation, as they have studied stability and strategy-proofness sep-
arately. If agents are capable of misreporting their preferences during the
centralized matching process and rematching (blocking) after the matching
is announced, she may be able to use the combination of these manipulations.
One notable exception is Chakraborty, Citanna, and Ostrovsky (2007), who
consider a combination of these manipulations together and propose a sta-
bility concept against these manipulations in a matching problem with inter-
dependent values.3 Adopting their concept to the standard matching model
without interdependent values, we say that a mechanism is robustly stable
if no student is made strictly better off even by a combined manipulation of
misreporting preferences and rematching.
Although this departure from the standard analysis may seem small, it
has a very different implication on the design of matching mechanisms. First
we demonstrate that, even when school priorities are exogenously given and
only students can behave strategically, there is no robustly stable mechanism
in general.
Given the above impossibility theorem, a natural question is what con-
dition may allow for a robustly stable mechanism. Our main result charac-
terizes the existence of a robustly stable mechanism in terms of the priority
structure of schools. More specifically, we show that there is a robustly sta-
ble mechanism in a market if and only if the priority structure of schools in
that market is acyclic (Ergin, 2002). Moreover, if there is a robustly stable
2
For a summary of this evidence, see Roth (2002).
3
Relationship with their paper will be discussed subsequently.

2
mechanism, then it coincides with the student-optimal stable mechanism.
The analysis of this paper suggests that one cannot expect complete elim-
ination of manipulations even when only students can act strategically. If the
social planner can influence the priority structure, as in the case of student
placement in public schools, the theory suggests that acyclicity is likely to
make the system immune to manipulations.
At this point we comment on a conceptual issue. The model assumes
that school priorities are publicly known. Publicly known school priorities
arise naturally in the school choice setting: As Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez
(2003) point out, school priorities are exogenously given by law in many
school districts. In such a case, however, one might argue that schools are
not strategic players and hence do not participate in rematching, so combined
manipulations are unimportant and instead stability and strategy-proofness
are sufficient. Even in school choice, however, robust stability may be impor-
tant: One such occasion is the appeals process. In student placement to high
schools in New York City, for instance, many students participate in an ap-
peals process to be assigned to a school they like better than their prescribed
assignment (Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak, and Roth, 2005, 2009). For the aca-
demic year 2003-2004, more than 5,000 students appealed their assignments,
and about 300 appeals were from students who received their stated first
choices.4 The department of education granted about a half of the students
in the appeals process. This suggests that students may be able to engage
in rematching even in the school choice setting.5 From a technical point of
view, the assumption that preferences or priorities of one side of the market
are publicly known simplifies the analysis and helps understand the conse-
quence of the new stability concept itself. Indeed, Chakraborty, Citanna,
and Ostrovsky (2007) similarly assume that preferences of students (rather
than priorities of schools) are publicly known in the labor market context.

The next section presents the model and the results. Relation with the
literature will be discussed after the main result of the paper.

2 Model and Results

A matching problem is tuple (S, C, P, , q). S and C are finite and disjoint
sets of students and schools. For each student s ∈ S, Ps is a strict preference
relation over C and being unmatched (being unmatched is denoted by ∅). We
4
Interestingly, successful manipulations that appear in our analysis involve students
rematching after they receive their stated first choices.
5
The author is grateful to Al Roth for suggesting this example.

3
write cRs c0 (where c, c0 ∈ C ∪ {∅}) if either cPs c0 or c = c0 . For each school
c ∈ C, c is a priority, which is a strict, complete and transitive binary
relation over S and being unmatched, ∅. = (c )c∈C . For each c ∈ C, qc is
a quota of c. A matching is a vector µ = (µs )s∈S assigning a seat in school
µs ∈ C or ∅ to each student s, with seats in each school c assigned to at
most qc students. We write µc = {s ∈ S|µs = c} for the set of students who
are assigned seats in school c. The set of a student’s possible preferences is
denoted by P.
We say that matching µ is blocked by (s, c) ∈ S × C if cPs µs and either
(1) |µc | < qc and s c ∅ or (2) |µc | = qc , s c ∅ and s c s0 for some s0 ∈ µc .
A matching µ is individually rational if µs Ps ∅ for every s ∈ S and |µc | ≤ qc
and s c ∅ for all s ∈ µc . A matching µ is stable if it is individually rational
and is not blocked.
We refer to tuple (S, C, , q) as a market and consider a situation where
only student preferences are private information in a fixed market (S, C, , q).
A mechanism is a function ϕ from P |S| to the set of all matchings. Mecha-
nism ϕ is stable if ϕ(P ) is a stable matching for every P ∈ P |S| . Mechanism
ϕ is strategy-proof if ϕs (P )Rs ϕs (Ps0 , P−s ) for every P ∈ P |S| , s ∈ S and
Ps0 ∈ P. Note that we only allow for students to report preferences and school
priorities are publicly known.6 This assumption simplifies the analysis and
helps understand the consequence of the new stability concept of this paper.
Publicly known school priorities arise naturally in the school choice setting:
As Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez (2003) point out, school priorities are exoge-
nously given by law in many school districts. A similar approach is taken
by Chakraborty, Citanna, and Ostrovsky (2007) also in the context of labor
markets, who assume that preferences of students (rather than priorities of
schools) are publicly known.7
Definition 1. A mechanism ϕ is robustly stable if the following conditions
are satisfied.
(1) ϕ is stable,
6
There is rich literature on strategic behavior when preferences of both sides of the
market are private information. Roth (1982) shows there is no stable mechanism that is
strategy-proof for all agents on both sides. Sönmez (1997) and Sönmez (1999) show other
forms of manipulations are unavoidable for stable mechanisms, and subsequent work by
Konishi and Ünver (2006), Kojima (2006) and Kojima (2007) obtain conditions for such
manipulations to be profitable and investigate their welfare consequences. Kojima and
Pathak (2008) show that manipulations become increasingly difficult as the size of the
market becomes large.
7
Chakraborty, Citanna, and Ostrovsky (2007) assume that each school has one posi-
tion, so their model can be made into one where school priorities are publicly known by
relabeling students and schools.

4
 (2) ϕ is strategy-proof, and

(3) there exist no s ∈ S, c ∈ C, P ∈ P |S| and Ps0 ∈ P such that (i)

cPs ϕs (P ), (ii) s c ∅ and (iii) s c s0 for some s0 ∈ ϕc (Ps0 , P−s ) or
|ϕc (Ps0 , P−s )| < qc .

In words, a mechanism is robustly stable if it is stable, strategy-proof and

also immune to a combined manipulation, where a student first misrepresents
his or her preferences and then blocks the matching that is produced by
the centralized mechanism. Condition (3) is the marginal requirement over
the combination of stability and strategy-proofness and it plays a central
role in our analysis. To the best of our knowledge, Chakraborty, Citanna,
and Ostrovsky (2007) are the first to introduce the concept in two-sided
matching.8 They consider a matching model with interdependent values and
define stability which reduces to robust stability in the standard matching
models without interdependent values.
As mentioned in the introduction, one specific context in which robust
stability may arise as a natural stability concept may be a student place-
ment process with appeals. For example, many students in New York City
participate in an appeals process to be assigned to a school they prefer to
their prescribed assignment (Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak, and Roth, 2005, 2009).
For the academic year 2003-2004, more than 5,000 students appealed their
assignment and about 300 appeals were from students who received their
stated first choices. The department of education granted about a half of the
students in the appeals process. This suggests that students may be able to
engage in a rematching even in the school choice setting.
Given P , the following student-proposing deferred acceptance algo-
rithm produces a stable matching ϕS (P ) (Gale and Shapley, 1962).

• Step 1: Each student applies to her first choice school (if any). Each
school rejects the lowest-ranking students in excess of its capacity and
all unacceptable students among those who applied to it, keeping the
rest of students temporarily (so students not rejected at this step may
be rejected in later steps.)

In general,

• Step t: Each student who was rejected in Step (t-1) applies to her next
highest acceptable choice if any. Each school considers these students
and students who are temporarily held from the previous step together,
8
In a different context of principal-agent problem, Myerson (1982) considers a similar
notion of combined manipulations.

5
 and rejects the lowest-ranking students in excess of its capacity and all
unacceptable students, keeping the rest of students temporarily (so
students not rejected at this step may be rejected in later steps.)

The algorithm terminates at the point when no one applies to a school.

Each student tentatively accepted by a school at the last step is allocated a
seat in that school. The student-optimal stable mechanism is a mecha-
nism ϕS that produces ϕS (P ) for every P ∈ P |S| . It is well known that ϕS is
stable (Gale and Shapley, 1962) and strategy-proof (proven by Dubins and
Freedman (1981) and Roth (1982).) The following example demonstrates,
however, that ϕS is not immune to the combination of these two kinds of
manipulations even though it is immune to each of them separately.

Example 1. Consider a problem with S = {1, 2, 3}, C = {a, b}, and

P1 : b, a, ∅,
P2 : a, ∅,
P3 : a, b, ∅,
a : 1, 2, 3, ∅, qa = 1,
b : 3, 1, ∅, qb = 1.

Under the true preferences P = (P1 , P2 , P3 ), the student-optimal stable mech-

anism ϕS produces ϕS (P ) = (ϕS1 (P ), ϕS2 (P ), ϕS3 (P )) = (a, ∅, b).
Now consider a false preference P20 of student 2, P20 : ∅. Then, under
P 0 = (P20 , P−2 ), ϕS produces ϕS (P 0 ) = (b, ∅, a). Since aP2 ∅ = ϕS2 (P ) and
2 a 3 ∈ ϕSa (P 0 ), ϕS is not robustly stable: More specifically, student 2 has
incentives to first report P20 and then block ϕS (P 0 ), violating condition (3)
of the definition of robust stability.

Since ϕS is the only mechanism that is stable and strategy-proof, by

Example 1 we have just proved the following impossibility result.

Theorem 1. There exists no mechanism that is robustly stable for all mar-
kets.

The next question to ask is whether we can say a mechanism is robustly

stable in a specific market. In other words, we investigate conditions on a pair
(, q), called priority structure, under which the mechanism is robustly
stable. The following concept will prove useful.

Definition 2 (Ergin (2002)). Let (, q) be a priority structure. A cycle is

a, b ∈ C, i, j, k ∈ S such that

6
 • i a j a k a ∅ and k b i b ∅, and

• There exist disjoint sets of students Sa , Sb ⊂ S \ {i, j, k} such that

|Sa | = qa − 1, |Sb | = qb − 1, s a j for every s ∈ Sa and s b i for every
s ∈ Sb .

A priority structure (, q) is acyclic if there exists no cycle.

With the above notion, we can now present our main result, which is a
characterization of markets where a robustly stable mechanism exists.

Theorem 2. For market (S, C, , q), the following statements are equivalent.

(1) There exists a robustly stable mechanism.

(2) ϕS is robustly stable.

(3) The priority structure (, q) is acyclic.

Proof. See Appendix.

Theorems 1 and 2 suggest that manipulations may be unavoidable even
when only students can act strategically. If the social planner can influence
the priority structure, as in the case of student placement in public schools,
the theory suggests that acyclicity would make the system immune to ma-
nipulations. This point of view is shared by a number of studies, from a
related but different aspects. Ergin (2002) shows that the student-optimal
stable mechanism is group strategy-proof if and only if the priority structure
is acyclic.9 Haeringer and Klijn (2007) show that, in the school choice set-
ting, the set of Nash equilibrium outcomes under the student-optimal stable
mechanism (possibly with constraints on the length of rank order lists) coin-
cides with the set of stable matchings if and only if the priority structure is
acyclic. Kesten (2008b) shows that the student-optimal stable mechanism is
immune to capacity manipulation (Sönmez, 1997) if and only if the priority
structure of schools is acyclic. Kesten (2006) introduces a slightly stronger
9
In Ergin’s work, group strategy-proofness means that no group of students can misre-
port preferences jointly and make some of its members strictly better off without making
any of its members strictly worse off. When the priority structure is not acyclic, only a
weaker version of group strategy-proofness holds. That is, no group of students can make
each of its members strictly better off by jointly misreporting their preferences. This latter
result is first shown by Dubins and Freedman (1981) and extended by Martinez, Masso,
Neme, and Oviedo (2004), Hatfield and Kojima (2007) and Hatfield and Kojima (2008)
to matching problems with contracts (Hatfield and Milgrom, 2005).

7
acyclicity concept and shows that the top trading cycles mechanism coin-
cides with the student-optimal stable mechanism if and only if the priority
structure satisfies his version of acyclicity.
An important related paper is Chakraborty, Citanna, and Ostrovsky
(2007). They consider a matching market with interdependent values and
introduce a stability concept that reduces to robust stability as defined in
this paper if there is no interdependent values. They establish impossibility
theorems which assert that there is no stable mechanism in their sense when
there is interdependent value of student quality. Meanwhile they also note
that their impossibility theorems can be obtained even with a weaker notion
of stability, namely the combination of traditional stability and strategy-
proofness as required separately. The current study complements their study
by showing that there exists no robustly stable mechanism even if there is
no interdependent value component, and then characterizing the condition
for the existence of a robustly stable mechanism.
Finally, we note that this study is part of the growing literature on in-
centive compatibility in student placement mechanisms. Erdil and Ergin
(2006) and Kesten (2008a) propose mechanisms that produce more efficient
student placements than the currently used mechanisms in New York City
and Boston, but they also show these mechanisms are not strategy-proof.
More generally, there is no strategy-proof mechanism that dominates the
student-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm (Abdulkadiroğlu, Pathak,
and Roth, 2009). When there is no priority, as in part of New York City’s
assignment process, the probabilistic serial mechanism (Bogomolnaia and
Moulin, 2001) is more efficient than the current random priority mechanism,
but the former mechanism is not strategy-proof. Pathak (2006) observes that
the efficiency gain of the probabilistic serial mechanism seems small in the
New York City data, and supports the random priority mechanism as an
appropriate market design.10 Kojima and Manea (2008), on the other hand,
show that the probabilistic serial mechanism is incentive compatible when the
number of seats in each school is sufficiently large. Che and Kojima (2009)
subsequently show that these two mechanisms are asymptotically equivalent
as the market becomes infinitely large.

3 Conclusion
This paper introduced a new stability concept, robust stability. Theorem 1
demonstrates that there is no robustly stable mechanism. This result suggests
10
Manea (2006) provides sufficient conditions for asymptotic efficiency and inefficiency
of the random priority mechanism.

8
that one cannot eliminate manipulations completely even when agents on
only one side of the market have private information. On the other hand,
Theorem 2 characterizes the market structures that enables robustly stable
mechanisms to exist. If the social planner can design the priority structure,
as in the case of student placement in public schools, the theory suggests
that acyclicity is likely to make the system robust to manipulations.
The extant literature has also found that acyclic priority structures to
be key to desirable properties in matching markets. Papers cited in the
Introduction are only a few examples. This paper identifies one more sense
in which such a structure proves critical for design of matching markets. We
envision that investigating further implications of priority structures may be
a fruitful direction of future research.

Appendix: Proof of Theorem 2

We say that mechanism ϕ is nonbossy if ϕs (Ps0 , P−s ) = ϕs (P ) implies
ϕ(Ps0 , P−s ) = ϕ(P ). The following result proves useful.

Result 1 (Ergin (2002)). Mechanism ϕS is nonbossy for market (S, C, , q)

if and only if (, q) is acyclic.

Now we proceed to the proof. We will show (1) ⇐⇒ (2), (2) =⇒ (3)
and (3) =⇒ (2) and in this order.

(1) ⇐⇒ (2) Condition (2) obviously implies condition (1). Since the
only stable mechanism that is strategy-proof is ϕS , it is also obvious that
condition (1) implies condition (2).

(2) =⇒ (3) We show the claim by contraposition. Suppose that the priority
structure is not acyclic. Then, by definition, there exist a, b ∈ C, i, j, k ∈ S
such that

• i a j a k a ∅ and k b i b ∅, and

• There exist disjoint sets of students Sa , Sb ⊂ S \ {i, j, k} such that

|Sa | = qa − 1, |Sb | = qb − 1, s a j for every s ∈ Sa and s b i for every
s ∈ Sb .

9
Consider the following preferences of students:

Pi :b, a, ∅,
Pj :a, ∅,
Pk :a, b, ∅,
Ps :a, ∅, for every s ∈ Sa ,
Ps :b, ∅, for every s ∈ Sb ,
Ps :∅, for every s ∈ S \ [{i, j, k} ∪ Sa ∪ Sb ].

It is easy to see that ϕSj (P ) = ∅. Now consider a false preference of student

j, Pj0 : ∅. We write P 0 = (Pj0 , P−j ). Then ϕSk (P 0 ) = a. Since aPj ∅ = ϕSj (P )
and j a k ∈ ϕSa (P 0 ), ϕS is not robustly stable.

(3) =⇒ (2) We show the claim by contradiction. To this end, suppose

that (, q) is acyclic but ϕS is not robustly stable. Since ϕS is stable and
strategy-proof, this assumption implies that

Condition (A): there exist s ∈ S, c ∈ C, P ∈ P |S| and Ps0 ∈ P such

that (i) cPs ϕSs (P ), (ii) s c ∅ and (iii) s c s0 for some s0 ∈ ϕSc (Ps0 , P−s ) or
|ϕSc (Ps0 , P−s )| < qc .

Letting P 0 = (Ps0 , P−s ), we consider the following cases.

(1) Suppose ϕSs (P 0 ) = ∅. Let Ps00 : c, ∅ and P 00 = (Ps00 , P−s ).

(a) Suppose ϕSs (P 00 ) = ∅. Then, since (, q) is acyclic by assumption

and hence ϕS is nonbossy by Result 1, we have ϕS (P 00 ) = ϕS (P 0 ).
This means
cPs00 ϕSs (P 00 ) = ∅,
and, by Condition (A), either s c s0 for some s0 ∈ ϕSc (P 0 ) =
ϕSc (P 00 ) or |ϕSc (P 00 )| = |ϕSc (P 0 )| < qc , so ϕS (P 00 ) is unstable under
P 00 . This contradicts the fact that ϕS is a stable mechanism.
(b) Suppose ϕSs (P 00 ) = c. Then this is a contradiction to strategy-
proofness of ϕS , since ϕSs (P 00 ) = cPs ϕSs (P ).

(2) Suppose ϕSs (P 0 ) 6= ∅. Let

Ps00 : ∅,
and P 00 = (Ps00 , P−s ). By the well-known comparative statics by Kelso
and Crawford (1982) and Gale and Sotomayor (1985), |ϕSc (P 0 )| ≥
|ϕSc (P 00 )| and, if |ϕSc (P 0 )| = |ϕSc (P 00 )| = qc , then there exists s00 ∈

10
 ϕSc (P 00 ) such that s0 c s00 or s0 = s00 for all s0 ∈ ϕSc (P 0 ). Thus Con-
dition (A) is satisfied with respect to s, c and Ps00 (instead of Ps0 ) and,
since ϕSs (P 00 ) = ∅, the analysis reduces to Case (1) above.

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