A survey on assignment markets

Abstract

The assignment game is a two-sided market, say buyers and sellers, where demand and supply are unitary and utility is transferable by means of prices. This survey is structured in three parts: a first part, from the introduction of the assignment game by Shapley and Shubik (1972) until the publication of the book of Roth and Sotomayor (1990), focused on the notion of core; the subsequent investigations that broaden the scope to other notions of solution for these markets; and its extensions to assignment markets with multiple sides or multiple partnership. These extended two-sided assignment markets, that allow for multiple partnership, better represent the situation in a labour market or an auction.