Stability in large matching markets with complementarities

Abstract

Labor markets can often be viewed as many-to-one matching markets. It is well known that if complementarities are present in such markets, a stable matching may not exist. We study large random matching markets with couples. We introduce a new matching algorithm and show that if the number of couples grows slower than the size of the market, a stable matching will be found with high probability. If however, the number of couples grows at a linear rate, with constant probability (not depending on the market size), no stable matching exists. Our results explain data from the market for psychology interns.