The exchange-stable marriage problem

In this paper we consider instances of stable matching problems, namely the classical stable marriage (SM) and stable roommates (SR) problems and their variants. In such instances we consider a stability criterion that has recently been proposed, that of <i>exchange-stability</i>. In particular, we prove that ESM — the problem of deciding, given an SM instance, whether an exchange-stable matching exists — is NP-complete. This result is in marked contrast with Gale and Shapley's classical linear-time algorithm for finding a stable matching in an instance of SM. We also extend the result for ESM to the SR case. Finally, we study some variants of ESM under weaker forms of exchange-stability, presenting both polynomial-time solvability and NP-completeness results for the corresponding existence questions

On the Multidimensional Stable Marriage Problem

We provide a problem definition of the stable marriage problem for a general number of parties $p$ under a natural preference scheme in which each person has simple lists for the other parties. We extend the notion of stability in a natural way and present so called elemental and compound algorithms to generate matchings for a problem instance. We demonstrate the stability of matchings generated by both algorithms, as well as show that the former runs in $O(pn^2)$ time.Comment: 8 page

Lower bounds for the stable marriage problem and its variants

In an instance of the stable marriage problem of size n, n men and n women each ranks members of the opposite sex in order of preference. A stable marriage is a complete matching M = {(m_1, w_i_1), (m_2, w_i_2), ..., (m_n, w_i_n)} such that no unmatched man and woman prefer each other to their partners in M.A pair (m_i, w_j) is stable if it is contained in some stable marriage. In this paper, we prove that determining if an arbitrary pair is stable requires Ω(n^2) time in the worst case. We show, by an adversary argument, that there exists instances of the stable marriage problem such that it is possible to find at least one pair that exhibits the Ω(n^2) lower bound.As corollaries of our results, the lower bound of Ω(n^2) is established for several stable marriage related problems. Knuth, in his treatise on stable marriage, asks if there is an algorithm that finds a stable marriage in less than Θ(n^2) time. Our results show that such an algorithm does not exist

Group Strategyproof Pareto-Stable Marriage with Indifferences via the Generalized Assignment Game

We study the variant of the stable marriage problem in which the preferences of the agents are allowed to include indifferences. We present a mechanism for producing Pareto-stable matchings in stable marriage markets with indifferences that is group strategyproof for one side of the market. Our key technique involves modeling the stable marriage market as a generalized assignment game. We also show that our mechanism can be implemented efficiently. These results can be extended to the college admissions problem with indifferences

Scaling Behavior in the Stable Marriage Problem

We study the optimization of the stable marriage problem. All individuals attempt to optimize their own satisfaction, subject to mutually conflicting constraints. We find that the stable solutions are generally not the globally best solution, but reasonably close to it. All the stable solutions form a special sub-set of the meta-stable states, obeying interesting scaling laws. Both numerical and analytical tools are used to derive our results.Comment: 6 pages, revtex, 3 figures. To appear in J. de Physique I, vol 7, No 12 (December

The stable marriage problem with master preference lists

We study variants of the classical stable marriage problem in which the preferences of the men or the women, or both, are derived from a master preference list. This models real-world matching problems in which participants are ranked according to some objective criteria. The master list(s) may be strictly ordered, or may include ties, and the lists of individuals may involve ties and may include all, or just some, of the members of the opposite sex. In fact, ties are almost inevitable in the master list if the ranking is done on the basis of a scoring scheme with a relatively small range of distinct values. We show that many of the interesting variants of stable marriage that are NP-hard remain so under very severe restrictions involving the presence of master lists, but a number of special cases can be solved in polynomial time. Under this master list model, versions of the stable marriage problem that are already solvable in polynomial time typically yield to faster and/or simpler algorithms, giving rise to simple new structural characterisations of the solutions in these cases