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American Economic Review Vol. 89 No. 4 1999

The Redesign of the Matching Market for American Physicians: Some Engineering Aspects of Economic Design

Alvin E. Roth1; Elliott Peranson2

1 Department of Economics, and Graduate School of Business Administration, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA 02138. · 2 National Matching Services, Inc., 595 Bay Street, Suite 301, Box 29, Toronto, ON M5G 2C2, Canada.

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Abstract

We report on the design of the new clearinghouse adopted by the National Resident Matching Program, which annually fills approximately 20,000 jobs for new physicians. Because the market has complementarities between applicants and between positions, the theory of simple matching markets does not apply directly. However, computational experiments show the theory provides good approximations. Furthermore, the set of stable matchings, and the opportunities for strategic manipulation, are surprisingly small. A new kind of "core convergence" result explains this; that each applicant interviews only a small fraction of available positions is important. We also describe engineering aspects of the design process.

DOI
10.1257/aer.89.4.748
Volume
89
Issue
4
Pages
748-780
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex openalex crossref

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