Matching with Subjective and Objective Evaluations

Abstract

There are matching markets in which objective evaluations such as exam scores, skill qualifications, and priorities, are available in addition to subjective evaluations over agents. To examine these situations, we extend a college admission model by allowing that colleges have two different types of ordinal rankings over students, i.e., common priority order and individual preferences. A matching is called double stable if it is both priority stable and preference stable. While the existence of a double stable matching is not always guaranteed, we provide its characterization through the existing well-known mechanisms in the literature; a double stable matching exists if and only if the resulting outcome of the serial dictatorship mechanism coincides with that of the student-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism.

Keywords: matching, objective evaluation, priority, double stability.

JEL Classification: C78, D47.