This book focuses on economic bargaining theory. Economic bargaining theory seeks to predict the outcomes of bargaining situations. In such situations, govern ments, ?rms, or individuals share a mutual interest in cooperation; however, they also have con?icting interests regarding the terms of an agreement. A classic ex ample of such a situation is wage bargaining between unions and employers. More commonplace examples also exist. For instance, a discussion between partners on how to spend an evening can be understood as a bargaining situation. Economic bargaining theory explores the relationship between bargaining situ ations and the outcomes of the bargaining. Economists have two primary reasons to show interest in this relationship. The ?rst reason is that many important human interactions, including economic interactions, are bargaining situations. The second reason is that the understanding of these situations may inform the economic theory of markets. The tool utilized in this study is the mathematical theory of games. Predictions for bargaining outcomes are developed by modeling the bargaining situation as a strategic game and using game theoretic equilibrium concepts in order to solve the game. In this approach, the speci?c identi?ed bargaining outcome depends on the assumptions underlying the model. The neoclassical and fundamental assumption is that of rational agents—called economic men—who strive to maximize their utility based on stable preferences.

Two-sided matching provides a model of search processes such as those between firms and workers in labor markets or between buyers and sellers in auctions. This book gives a comprehensive account of recent results concerning the game-theoretic analysis of two-sided matching. The focus of the book is on the stability of outcomes, on the incentives that different rules of organization give to agents, and on the constraints that these incentives impose on the ways such markets can be organized. The results for this wide range of related models and matching situations help clarify which conclusions depend on particular modeling assumptions and market conditions, and which are robust over a wide range of conditions. 'This book chronicles one of the outstanding success stories of the theory of games, a story in which the authors have played a major role: the theory and practice of matching markets ... The authors are to be warmly congratulated for this fine piece of work, which is quite unique in the game-theoretic literature.' From the Foreword by Robert Aumann

This thesis consists of three studies in matching theory and market design. Its main focus is to compare matching rules according to normative criteria, primarily fairness, when objects have priorities over agents. In the first study we analyze one-to-one matching and prove that in general we cannot find a strategy-proof and Pareto-efficient mechanism which stands out uniquely in terms of fairness when using fundamental criteria for profile-by-profile comparison. In particular, despite suggestions to the contrary in the literature, the Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanism is not more fair than all other mechanisms in this class. We also show that while the TTC is not dominated, if the priority profile is strongly cyclic then there is not much scope for TTC to dominate other matching rules in this class. In the second study, which focuses on many-to-on matching, I provide a direct proof that Ergin's cycle (Ergin, 2002) is stronger than Kesten's cycle (Kesten, 2006), due to different scarcity conditions for the quotas on objects. I also prove that when there is a Kesten cycle there is no strategy-proof and Pareto-efficient mechanism which uniquely stands out in terms of the fairness criteria. Moreover, I use simulations to show that as the number of Kesten cycles increases, there are more fairness violations and fewer preference profiles at which the TTC mechanism is fair. The third study compares three competing many-to-one matching mechanisms that are strategy-proof and Pareto-efficient but not fair, namely the TTC, Equitable Top Trading Cycles (ETTC) and Clinch and Trade (CT) mechanisms. Although one would expect that ETTC and CT are more fair than the TTC, I demonstrate the opposite for specific preference profiles and compare the aggregate number of fairness violations using simulations. I find that ETTC tends to have fewer priority violations in the aggregate than the other two mechanisms across both different quota distributions and varying correlations of preferences. Finally, I show that all three mechanisms become more efficient when the commonly most preferred object has the highest quota, and demonstrate that the more unequal the quota distribution, the more fair and efficient the three mechanisms become.

This book constitutes the refereed proceedings of the 17th International Conference on Web and Internet Economics, WINE 2021, which was held online during December 14-17, 2021. The conference was originally planned to take place in Potsdam, Germany, but changed to a virtual event due to the COVID-19 pandemic. The 41 full papers presented in this volume were carefully reviewed and selected from 146 submissions. They were organized in topical sections as follows: mechanism design and pricing; matching, markets and equilibria; learning, fairness, privacy and behavioral models; social choice and cryptocurrencies.