On the Importance of Relative Payoffs in Two-Sided Matching

Abstract

In a series of laboratory experiments, small groups of individuals who find themselves in an unequal pairwise-stable outcome tacitly form coalitions on one sideof the market to protect or reject that outcome. The contribution of this work isin showing that relative payoffs play a role in two-sided matching markets; thatin the lab, a same-side blocking coalition can form; and that the matching prescribed by deferred acceptance, by virtue of being highly asymmetric, may not survive same-side blocking coalitions.