MATCH-UP 2026, Paris 1-3 July, 2026, call for papers

 

MATCH-UP 2026

8th International Workshop on Matching Under Preferences

NYU Paris, Paris, France

1-3 July, 2026

MATCH-UP is a series of interdisciplinary and international workshops on matching under preferences. The remit of these workshops is to explore matching problems with preferences from the perspective of algorithms and complexity discrete mathematics, combinatorial optimization, game theory mechanism design and economics, and thus a key objective is to bring together the research communities of the related areas. Another important aim is to convey the excitement of recent research and new application areas, exposing participants to new ideas, new techniques, and new problems.

List of Topics

The matching problems under consideration include, but are not limited to:

• Two-sided matchings involving agents on both sides (e.g., college admissions, medical resident allocation, job markets, and school choice)
• Two-sided matchings involving agents and objects (e.g., house allocation, course allocation, project allocation, assigning papers to reviewers, and school choice)
• One-sided matchings (e.g., roommate problems, coalition formation games, and kidney exchange)
• Multi-dimensional matchings (e.g., 3D stable matching problems)
• Matching with payments (e.g., assignment game)
• Online and stochastic matching models (e.g., Google Ads, ride sharing, Match.com)
• Other recent applications (e.g., refugee resettlement, food banks, social housing, and daycare)

Invited speakers:
Itai Ashlahi – Stanford University
Irene Lo – Stanford MSE
Rebecca Reiffenhäuser – University of Amsterdam

Dates:
Submission deadline: February 15, 2026.
Notification: April 15, 2026.
Final registration: June 1, 2026

Organizers: CREST, ERC MADPART, Ecole polytechnique

 

Nikhil Agarwal Wins Infosys Prize 2025

 From Inomics:

Nikhil Agarwal (MIT) Wins Infosys Prize 2025 for Groundbreaking Work in Market Design 

13 November 2025

Recognising innovation in the field of economics, the Infosys Science Foundation (ISF) has awarded the prestigious Infosys Prize 2025 in Economics to Nikhil Agarwal, the Paul A. Samuelson Professor of Economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 

Nikhil Agarwal's pioneering contributions to market design have set new standards in empirical studies for allocation mechanisms, affecting critical areas such as school choice, medical residency, and kidney exchanges, and make him a worthy winner of the 2025 Infosys Prize in Economics.

The selection of Agarwal comes as part of the ISF's initiative to promote early-career researchers by honoring individuals under 40 years of age. This shift, introduced in 2024, underscores the foundation's commitment to recognizing and nurturing talent that shapes the future of scholarship and innovation. 

Agarwal's research addresses complex "matching problems," scenarios where traditional market principles fall short. His work elucidates how individuals seeking vital resources—like patients in need of kidney transplants or students aiming for college admission—can be systematically matched through innovative market design techniques. By anchoring his theories in empirical data, Agarwal provides profound insights that have the potential to influence policy design and enhance societal welfare. 

The Infosys Prize is renowned for being one of the most significant awards in India, which not only honors excellence but also fosters a scientific culture that drives innovation across multiple disciplines. Each laureate receives a gold medal, a citation, and a prize purse of USD 100,000, along with international recognition, often leading to further prestigious awards. 

 

Matching Senators to committees: a(nother) party divide, by Ashutosh Thakur

 Here's an innovative paper by Ashutosh Thakur that does for legislative matching of senators to committees what the study of matching and market design has long been doing in economics, which is discovering and analyzing the underlying institutional mechanisms that make things happen.

Thakur, Ashutosh. "A matching theory perspective on legislative organization: assignment of committees." Political Science Research and Methods (2025): 1-25. 

Abstract: How legislatures allocate power and conduct business are central determinants of policy outcomes. Much of the literature on parties and the committee system in legislatures examines which members serve on which committees. What has received less attention are the mechanisms by which parties allocate members to committees. I show that parties in the US Senate use matching mechanisms, like those used in school choice and the medical residency match. Republicans and Democrats use two distinct matching mechanisms, such that canonical theories of parties cannot apply equally to them. The Republican mechanism is strategyproof, whereas the Democrat mechanism incentivizes politicians to manipulate their reported preferences. Leveraging matching theory, I make theoretical predictions; corroborating them with archival correspondence and committee requests/assignments data.

The Walras-Bowley Lecture: Fragmentation of Matching Markets and How Economics Can Help Integrate Them, by Kamada, Kojima, and Matsushita

 Fuhito Kojima's 2023 Walras Bowley Lecture has just been uploaded to arxiv, and it looks to be an exciting contribution to the market design literature.  It considers the fact that administrative boundaries cause many markets to be fragmented, and hence less thick than they might otherwise be, and how some of the resulting efficiency loss can be recovered.

The Walras-Bowley Lecture: Fragmentation of Matching Markets and How Economics Can Help Integrate Them, by Yuichiro Kamada, Fuhito Kojima, and Akira Matsushita
(August 27, 2025) 

Below is the abstract and opening paragraphs. 

"Abstract
Fragmentation of matching markets is a ubiquitous problem across countries and across applications. In order to study the implications of fragmentation and possibilities for integration, we first document and discuss a variety of fragmentation cases in practice such as school choice, medical residency matching, and so forth. Using the real-life dataset of daycare matching markets in Japan, we then empirically evaluate the impact of interregional transfer of students by estimating student utility functions under a variety of specifications and then using them for counterfactual simulation. Our simulation compares a fully integrated market and a partially integrated one with a “balancedness” constraint—for each region, the inflow of students from the other regions must be equal to the outflow to the other areas. We find that partial integration achieves 39.2 to 59.6% of the increase in the child welfare that can be attained under full integration, which is equivalent to a 3.3 to 4.9% reduction of travel time. The percentage decrease in the unmatch rate is 40.0 to 52.8% under partial integration compared to the case of full integration. The results suggest that even in environments where full integration is not a realistic option, partial integration, i.e., integration that respects the balancedness constraint, has a potential to recover a nontrivial portion of the loss from fragmentation.

Introduction
Many of the most consequential markets in our societies—school admissions, medical resident matching, daycare placements, kidney exchanges—are matching markets, where centralized mechanisms are often employed to improve efficiency and fairness. Over the past several decades, the field of market design has made substantial progress in developing and implementing such mechanisms (e.g., Abdulkadiroğlu and Sönmez (2003) for school choice, Roth (1984) for medical residency matching, Kamada and Kojima (2023) for daycare placements, and Roth et al. (2004) for kidney exchanges). In doing so, it has led economists to assume a dual role as both analysts and engineers (Roth, 2002).

How are those sophisticated mechanisms implemented in practice? Typically, these mechanisms are run by individual cities, districts or institutions, and the implementation is usually confined to narrowly defined administrative or political boundaries. These boundaries can reflect long-standing institutional arrangements, localized funding responsibilities, or jurisdictional autonomy. Regardless of their origins, the consequence is that agents on different sides of a boundary are matched as if they participated in entirely separate markets—even when they live mere blocks apart.

The aim of this paper is to study the implications of fragmentation of matching markets and possibilities for integration. To do so, we begin by offering a detailed descriptive account of fragmented matching markets in practice. We observe that fragmentation is prevalent across a variety of settings globally, from public school systems and childcare allocation to medical residency assignments, foster care placements, and public housing markets, among others. We highlight how institutional boundaries and localized governance create fragmented, parallel markets. Each case underscores the potential inefficiencies due to constrained choices caused by fragmentation, motivating our inquiry into mechanisms that can integrate markets effectively.

Against this background, we then investigate public daycare assignment in Japan in detail. "

Tinder has plans to become less focused on hookups

 The WSJ has the story:

Tinder’s New Chief Is Out to Change Its Hookup-App Reputation. Spencer Rascoff is rethinking Match Group’s biggest app as younger online daters grow tired of swiping  By  Chip Cutter 

"Tinder’s new chief, Match Group CEO Spencer Rascoff, aims to revamp the app’s image away from hookups to attract Gen Z.

"Rascoff plans to introduce new features, leverage AI, and enhance user safety to improve user experience.

"Tinder is testing a “double dating” feature and will roll it out globally this summer to create low-pressure ways for people to meet.

...

“This generation of Gen Z, 18 to 28—it’s not a hookup generation. They don’t drink as much alcohol, they don’t have as much sex,” he told investors this month. “We need to adapt our products to accept that reality.”

Matching Theory and Market Design: conference in Sicily.

 Here's the preliminary program for the

20th Matching in Practice Workshop  University of Messina, Department of Economics, Aula Magna 2, 15-16 May 2025

Thursday 15 May

9:00-9:15 Opening

9:15-11:00 Presentation session “Matching with externalities and equity concerns I” 

 Alexander Nesterov, Higher School of Economics  “Reserves in Targeted Admissions: A Mechanism Design Approach” 

 Guillaume Haeringer, Baruch College  “School Choice under Uncertainty: an Experiment” 

Antonio Romero Medina, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid  “Optimizing Daycare Enrollment: How To Avoid Early Applications”

11:00-11:15 Coffee break

11:15-13:00 Presentation session “Dynamic matching and incentives to participation I”

 Duygu Sili, Università degli Studi di Messina  “Costly Multi-Hospital Dynamic Kidney Exchange”

 Subhajit Pramanik, Università degli Studi di Padova  “A Dynamic Bargaining Framework for International Kidney Paired Exchange Program”

 Özgür Yilmaz, Koç University “Dynamically Optimal Kidney Exchange” 

13:00-14:00 Lunch

14:00-15:15 Seminar presented by the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics Prof. Alvin Roth (Stanford University)  “The Economics of Kidney Exchange: Kidneys and Controversies”  (open to the public)

16:00-22:00 Departure to and walk across Taormina, with gala dinner to follow at Ristorante La Botte.

Friday 16 May

9:00-10:45 Presentation session “Matching with externalities and equity concerns II” 

Flip Klijn, Institute for Economic Analysis (CSIC) and Barcelona School of Economics  “Characterizing No-Trade-Bundled Top-Trading Cycles Mechanisms for Multiple-Type Housing Markets”

 Péter Biró, Institute of Economics, HUN-REN KRTK “Ex-post Stability under Two-Sided Matching: Complexity and Characterization”

 Emre Dogan, HSE University “Incentivizing Public Lawyers and Enhancing Fairness via Sorting in Adversarial Systems”

10:45-11:00 Coffee break

11:00-12:45 Presentation session “Dynamic matching and incentives to participation II”

 Pietro Salmaso, Università degli Studi di Napoli Federico II  “Rationalizable Conjectures in Dynamic Matching”

Johanna Raith, IHW – Leibniz Institute for Economic Research “College Application Choices in a Repeated DA Setting: Evidence from Croatia”

 Sonal Yadav, University of Liverpool “Teacher Redistribution in Public Schools”

12:45-13:40 Roundtable  “Organ-donor exchange programs, international comparison” Moderator Prof. Antonio Nicolò (Università degli Studi di Padova), with the participation of Prof. Alvin Roth (Stanford University) and Dr. Giuseppe Feltrin (National Transplant Center)

13:40-14:30 Farewell lunch.

 The MiP Workshop is an annual meeting organized by the Matching in Practice network of European researchers working in the research field of Matching Theory and Market Design.

This year’s MiP workshop is funded by the following projects: Prin2022 “Externalities and fairness in allocations and contracts” (CUP J53D23004650006 – ID 2022HLPMKN) and PrinPNRR2022 “Incentivizing participation of compatible pairs in Kidney Paired Exchange Programs” (CUP J53D23015460001- ID P2022P5CHH), both funded by the European Union – Next Generation EU.

The Organizing Committee includes the Messina Unit Manager of the aforementioned projects, Prof. Antonio Miralles Asensio, and the Principal Investigators of both funding projects, respectively Prof. Maria Gabriella Graziano (University of Naples Federico II) and Prof. Antonio Nicolò (University of Padua). External members of the Scientific Committee are Prof. Caterina Calsamiglia (IPEG and ICREA, Spain), Prof. Rustam Hakimov (Université de Lausanne, Switzerland) and Prof. Péter Biró (Hungarian Academy of Sciences, Hungary).

Dating sites as matching markets: Bumble reimagined

The NYT interviews Whitney Wolfe Herd, who co-founded Twitter in 2012, started Bumble in 2014, stepped down as Bumble CEO and is now resuming that position, amidst some general malaise among dating apps, reflected in stock prices and drop-off in younger participants.  The interview is wide ranging and interesting. I'll excerpt two market design observations, both concerned with congestion--i.e. with the difficulty of curating and finding matches in a large market.

Here's the NYT interview:
Can Whitney Wolfe Herd Make Us Love Dating Apps Again?  By Lulu Garcia-Navarro

"The next era of Bumble, you had a lot of growth during the pandemic when everyone was stuck on their apps. It was a huge moment. You go public in 2021, ring the bell, baby on your hip, and the very next year user growth starts to slow down. What do you think was happening? My opinion is that I ran this company for the first several years as a quality over quantity approach. A telephone provider came to us early on. They said, “We love your brand, we want to put your app preprogrammed on all of our phones and when people buy our phones, your app will be on the home screen, and you’re going to get millions of free downloads.” I said, “Thank you so much but no thank you.” Nobody could understand what in the world I was doing, and I said it’s the wrong way to grow. This is not a social network, this is a double-sided marketplace. One person gets on and they have to see someone that is relevant to them. If you flood the system just endlessly — you’re not going to walk down the streets of New York City and want to meet every single person you pass. Why would you assume that someone would want to do that on an app? This is not a content platform where you can just scroll and scroll and scroll and scale drives results. What happened was, in the pandemic and throughout other chapters, growth was king. It was hailed as the end all be all.

...

"You’re quite bullish on A.I. I’ve heard you talk about it. How are you imagining A.I. functioning in this next iteration of the app? Let’s say we could train A.I. on thousands of what we perceive as great profiles, and the A.I. can get so sophisticated at understanding: “Wow, this person has a thoughtful bio. This person has photos that are not blurry. They’re not all group photos. They’re not wearing sunglasses. We can see who they are clearly and we understand that they took time.” The A.I. can now select the best people and start showing the best people the best people and start getting you to a match quicker, more efficiently, more thoughtfully. The goal for Bumble over the next few years is to become the world’s smartest matchmaker. This is beyond love. We have a friend product with a very broad member base, and it’s really beautiful."

Technology and the health care labor force--perfusionists

 The evolving health care labor force provides a window on technology and employment.  There are now a substantial number of clinical perfusionists, who are health care workers who operate heart-lung machines during open heart surgery.  In fact, there are now calls for a centralized clearinghouse for their training programs.

 Johnson, Blaine. "The feasibility of a national matching service for perfusion education program applicants." The Journal of ExtraCorporeal Technology 57, no. 1 (2025): 53-55. 

"Abstract: The perfusion profession is experiencing rapid advancement, creating an array of new opportunities for professional growth and educational expansion. However, this increase in demand is juxtaposed with a concerning limitation in the availability of positions for prospective students and may leave many qualified applicants without admission. This letter explores how implementing a national matching service alongside a centralized application service could streamline the application process for perfusion education programs in the United States. Over the last two decades, the number of available positions in perfusion education programs has surged significantly. This growth presents new challenges in recruitment due to varying requirements and timelines, often resulting in unstable matches. A national matching service could standardize acceptances, mitigate unfair practices, and enhance applicants’ and program decision-making. By ensuring a fair and efficient system, the national matching service could support the growing need for qualified healthcare perfusionists and promote the perfusion profession’s advancement."

Stable Matching with Interviews, by Ashlagi, Chen, Roghani and Saberi

 Job applicants can now easily submit many job applications, and so interviewing applicants, which is time consuming, has become a major source of congestion in many labor markets.  But even in labor markets that use a clearinghouse to process offers and acceptances (like the market for medical residents in the U.S., the NRMP match) interviews are often organized in a decentralized manner. Here's a paper that tackles the question of how to organize an interview match, under some assumptions about what kind of information is obtained in interviews.  Two approaches are considered: an 'adaptive' algorithm that takes into account the results of previous interviews in assigning subsequent interviews, and a 'non-adaptive' algorithm that matches candidates to interviews before any interview results are known.

Stable Matching with Interviews, by Itai Ashlagi, Jiale Chen, Mohammad Roghani, and Amin Saberi (all at Stanford)

Abstract
"In several two-sided markets, including labor and dating, agents typically have limited information about their preferences prior to mutual interactions. This issue can result in matching frictions, as arising in the labor market for medical residencies, where high application rates are followed by a large number of interviews. Yet, the extensive literature on two-sided matching primarily focuses on models where agents know their preferences, leaving the interactions necessary for preference discovery largely overlooked. This paper studies this problem using an algorithmic approach, extending Gale-Shapley’s deferred acceptance to this context. Two algorithms are proposed. The first is an adaptive algorithm that expands upon GaleShapley’s deferred acceptance by incorporating interviews between applicants and positions. Similar to deferred acceptance, one side sequentially proposes to the other. However, the order of proposals is carefully chosen to ensure an interim stable matching is found. Furthermore, with high probability, the number of interviews conducted by each applicant or position is limited to O(log^2 n).
"In many seasonal markets, interactions occur more simultaneously, consisting of an initial interview phase followed by a clearing stage. We present a non-adaptive algorithm for generating a single stage set of in tiered random markets. The algorithm finds an interim stable matching in such markets while assigning no more than O(log^3 n) interviews to each applicant or position. "

Sessions that caught my eye in the ASSA program

Economics of Higher Education

Lightning Round Session

 Saturday, Jan. 4, 2025   8:00 AM - 10:00 AM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Golden Gate 3

Hosted By: American Economic Association

• Chair: Caroline Hoxby, Stanford University

Cap-and-Apply: Unintended Consequences of College Application Policy in South Korea

Taekyu Eom

, 

SUNY-Buffalo

 

•  View Abstract

 

College Course Shutouts

Kevin Mumford

, 

Purdue University

Richard Patterson

, 

Brigham Young University

Anthony Yim

, 

Brigham Young University

 

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 3.27 MB)

Do Double Majors Face Less Risk? An Analysis of Human Capital Diversification

Andrew S. Hanks

, 

Ohio State University

Shengjun Jiang

, 

Wuhan University

Xuechao Qian

, 

Stanford University

 

Bo Wang

, 

Nankai University

Bruce A. Weinberg

, 

Ohio State University

•  View Abstract

 

Inequality-Aware Market Design

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Union Square 1 and 2

Hosted By: Econometric Society

• Chair: Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Waiting or Paying for Healthcare: Evidence from the Veterans Health Administration

Anna Russo

, 

Massachusetts Institute of Technology

 

•  View Abstract

Optimal Redistribution via Income Taxation and Market Design

Mohammad Akbarpour

, 

Stanford University

Pawel Doligalski

, 

University of Bristol

Piotr Dworczak

, 

Northwestern University

 

Scott Duke Kominers

, 

Harvard University

•  View Abstract

Should the Government Sell You Goods? Evidence from the Milk Market in Mexico

Diego Javier Jimenez Hernandez

, 

Chicago Federal Reserve

 

Enrique Seira

, 

Michigan State University

•  View Abstract

Taxing Externalities without Hurting the Poor

Mallesh M. Pai

, 

Rice University

Philipp Strack

, 

Yale University

 

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Vasiliki Skreta

, 

University of Texas-Austin and University College London

Dmitry Taubinsky

, 

University of California-Berkeley

Mohammad Akbarpour

, 

Stanford University

Dan Waldinger

, 

New York University

 

 

Market Design in College Admissions

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   10:15 AM - 12:15 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Union Square 11

Hosted By: Econometric Society

• Chair: Evan Riehl, Cornell University

College Application Mistakes and the Design of Information Policies at Scale

Anaïs Fabre

, 

Toulouse School of Economics

Tomas Larroucau

, 

Arizona State University

Christopher Andrew Neilson

, 

Princeton University

Ignacio Rios

, 

University of Texas-Dallas

 

•  View Abstract

Inequity in Centralized College Admissions with Public and Private Universities: Evidence from Albania

Iris Vrioni

, 

University of Michigan

 

•  View Abstract

Stakes and Signals: An Empirical Investigation of Muddled Information in Standardized Testing

Germán Reyes

, 

Middlebury College

Evan Riehl

, 

Cornell University

 

Ruqing Xu

, 

Cornell University

•  View Abstract
 
•  Download Preview (PDF, 1.12 MB)

 

Finance and Development

Paper Session

 Sunday, Jan. 5, 2025   1:00 PM - 3:00 PM (PST)

 Hilton San Francisco Union Square, Continental Ballroom 9

Hosted By: American Economic Association

• Chair: Martin Kanz, World Bank

Default Contagion in Microfinance

Natalia Rigol

, 

Harvard Business School

Ben Roth

, 

Harvard Business School

 

•  Hide Abstract

Abstract

Joint liability is one of the hallmarks of microfinance. Though it is intended to reduce non-payment, it has also been hypothesized to lead to default contagion, whereby non-payment by one borrower may reduce the likelihood of repayment by groupmates. Utilizing unexpected deaths, we document significant default contagion in one of Chile's largest microfinance institutions. We estimate that a single default causes an additional 0.8 borrowers to default, indicating that nearly half of observed default is due to contagion. 

Credit Contracts, Business Development, and Gender: Evidence from Uganda

Selim Gulesci

, 

Trinity College Dublin

 

Francesco Loiacono

, 

European Bank for Reconstruction and Development

Miri Stryjan

, 

Aalto University

Andreas Madestam

, 

Stockholm University

•  View Abstract

Discrimination Expectations in the Credit Market: Survey Evidence from India

Stefano Fiorin

, 

Bocconi University

Joseph Hall

, 

Stanford University

Martin Kanz

, 

World Bank

 

•  View Abstract

Discussant(s)

Simone Gabrielle Schaner

, 

University of Southern California

Anna Vitali

, 

New York University

Janis Skrastins

, 

Washington University-St. Louis