Resource allocation on the basis of priorities under multi-unit demand

Abstract

This paper considers resource allocation under multi-unit demand. We show that the deferred acceptance algorithm is efficient if and only if the priority structure satisfies an acyclicity condition introduced by Romero-Medina and Triossi (2020). It is also shown that such an acyclicity condition is sufficient but not necessary for the deferred acceptance algorithm to be consistent. In addition, under the acyclicity priority condition we obtain that the deferred acceptance algorithm satisfies a property of constrained respecting priority improvement, which partially extends a result of Balinski and Sönmez (1999) to resource allocation problems under multi-unit demand.