NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, tomorrow at Stanford

 Here's the program for the NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2026

I'll be discussing Moral Economics with Canice Prendergast. 

Friday, October 16

8:00 am Continental Breakfast

 

9:00 am Personalized Recommendations Without Inducing Congestion: Mitigating Disparities in the NYC High School Match

Erica Chiang, Cornell University

Nikhil Garg, Cornell University

Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University

Rebecca Lichtenstein, New York City Public Schools

Brielle McDaniel, New York City Public Schools

Kristen O’Neil, New York City Public Schools

Kenny Peng, Cornell University

Eva Tardos, Cornell University

Dejaunique Thomas, New York City Public Schools

Lianna Wright, New York City Public Schools

 

9:45 am Who Gets What in Education: Can School Matching Improve Student Achievement?

Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke University and NBER

Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER

Christopher R. Walters, University of California, Berkeley and NBER

 

10:30 am Break

11:00 am Searchable Menus

Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University

Frank Yang, Stanford University

 

11:45 am Two-Sided Matching with Partial Participation

Avinatan Hassidim, Bar-Ilan University

Assaf Romm, Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Ran Shorrer, The Pennsylvania State University

 

12:30 pm Lunch and Conversation with Al Roth about his latest book, "Moral Economics" with Canice Prendergast as Moderator

 

2:30 pm Clearing Multi-Unit Markets with Simple Pricing

Ali Makhdoumi, Duke University

Saša Pekeč, Duke University

Xinchang Wang, Duke University

 

3:15 pm Quota Marketplace: Dynamic Pricing for Efficient Allocation of ML Training Resources

Vasilis Gkatzelis, Drexel University

Renato Paes Leme, Google Research

Ian McFarlane, Google Research

Nehal Mehta, Google Research

Vahab Mirrokni, Google Research

Balasubramanian Sivan, Google Research

Mihai Tiuca, Google Research

Amin Vahdat, Google Research

Soheil Hassas Yeganeh, Google Research

 

4:00 pm Break

 

4:30 pm One-Shot Pricing for Hands-Off-the-Wheel Advertising Markets

Emerson Melo, Indiana University

Matthew Shum, California Institute of Technology

Rakesh Vohra, University of Pennsylvania

 

5:15 pm Paying for Information, Not for Clicks: A Block-Level Publisher Content Marketplace for AI Answers

Markus Mobius, Microsoft Research

Nicole Immorlica, Microsoft Research

Oliver Kiss, Spreadmonitor

Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research

Ishan Mahajan, Microsoft Research

Jingyi Qiu, University of Michigan School of Information

Tanya Rosenblat, University of Michigan

David M. Rothschild, Microsoft Research

Andras Sari, Central European University

Colin Watson, Microsoft Research

6:30 pm Group Dinner 

 

Saturday, October 17

8:00 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am

Screening for Usage

Justin Hadad, Stanford University

Kyle Woodward, Assign Group

 

9:45 am

Pricing the Right to Renege in Search Markets: Evidence from Trucking

Richard Faltings, University of California, San Diego

 

10:30 am

Break

 

11:00 am

Competition and Welfare in Airport Slot Allocation

Sebastian D. Bauer, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

11:45 am

Road Pricing under Heterogeneity

Itai Ater, Tel Aviv University

Brad Ross, University of Pennsylvania

Adi Shany, Tel Aviv University

Shoshana Vasserman, Stanford University and NBER

 

12:30 pm

Boxed Lunch and Adjourn

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, October at Stanford, Preliminary program

 Here's a preliminary program for the October NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting at Stanford

Market Design Working Group Meeting
Organized by Eric Budish and Michael Ostrovsky
October 16-17, 2026

Format: 35 minutes for the presentation, 10 minutes for discussion.
 

Friday, October 16
 
9:00 am    
Personalized Recommendations Without Inducing Congestion: Mitigating Disparities in the NYC High School Match
Erica Chiang, Cornell University
Kenny Peng, Cornell University
Rebecca Lichtenstein, New York City Public Schools
Brielle McDaniel, New York City Public Schools
Kristen O'Neil, New York City Public Schools
Dejaunique Thomas, New York City Public Schools
Lianna Wright, New York City Public Schools
Jon Kleinberg, Cornell University
Eva Tardos, Cornell University
Nikhil Garg, Cornell University
 

9:45 am    
Who Gets What in Education: Can School Matching Improve Student Achievement?
Atila Abdulkadiroglu, Duke University and NBER
Parag A. Pathak, Massachusetts Institute of Technology and NBER
Christopher R. Walters, University of California, Berkeley and NBER
 

10:30 am    
Break
 

11:00 am    
Searchable Menus
Frank Yang, Stanford University
Piotr Dworczak, Northwestern University
 

11:45 am    
Two-Sided Matching with Partial Participation
Assaf Romm, Hebrew University of Jerusalem
Ran Shorrer, The Pennsylvania State University
Avinatan Hassidim, Bar-Ilan University

12:30 pm    
Lunch and Conversation with Al Roth about his latest book, "Moral Economics"
 

2:30 pm    
Clearing Multi-Unit Markets with Simple Pricing
Ali Makhdoumi, Duke University
Saša Pekeč, Duke University
Xinchang Wang, Duke University
 

3:15 pm    
Quota Marketplace: Dynamic Pricing for Efficient Allocation of ML Training Resources
Renato Paes Leme, Google Research
Balasubramanian Sivan, Google Research
Mihai Tiuca, Google Research
Ian McFarlane, Google Research
Vasilis Gkatzelis, Drexel University
Nehal Mehta, Google Research
Soheil Hassas Yeganeh, Google Research
Vahab Mirrokni, Google Research
Amin Vahdat, Google Research
 

4:00 pm    
Break
 

4:30 pm    
One-Shot Pricing for Hands-Off-the-Wheel Advertising Markets
Emerson Melo, Indiana University
Matthew Shum, California Institute of Technology
Rakesh Vohra, University of Pennsylvania
 

5:15 pm    
Paying for Information, Not for Clicks: A Block-Level Publisher Content Marketplace for AI Answers
Markus Mobius, University of Michigan
Andras Sari, Central European University
Tanya Rosenblat, University of Michigan
David M. Rothschild, Microsoft Research
Brendan Lucier, Microsoft Research
Nicole Immorlica, Yale University
Oliver Kiss, Spreadmonitor
Jingyi Qiu, University of Michigan School of Information
Colin Watson, Microsoft Research
Ishan Mahajan, Microsoft Research
 

6:00 pm    
Adjourn
6:30 pm    
Group Dinner at Tamarine Restaurant, 546 University Avenue, Palo Alto
 

Saturday, October 17
8:00 am    
Continental Breakfast
 

9:00 am    
Screening for Usage
Justin Hadad, University of Oxford
Kyle Woodward, Assign Group
 

9:45 am    
Pricing the Right to Renege in Search Markets: Evidence from Trucking
Richard Faltings, University of California, San Diego
 

10:30 am    Break
 

11:00 am    
Competition and Welfare in Airport Slot Allocation
Sebastian D. Bauer, Universidad Carlos III de Madrid
 

11:45 am    
Road Pricing under Heterogeneity
Shoshana Vasserman, Stanford University and NBER
Brad Ross, University of Pennsylvania
Adi Shany, Tel Aviv University
Itai Ater, Tel Aviv University
 

12:30 pm    
Boxed Lunch and Adjourn 

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2025, October 17-18, 2025, Cambridge, MA

 

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2025,  October 17-18, 2025, Cambridge, MA
ORGANIZERS Eric Budish, Michael Ostrovsky, and Parag A. Pathak 

Friday, October 17

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am

The Structure of the Social Organization

Canice Prendergast, University of Chicago

The Impact of Race-Blind and Test-Optional Admissions on Racial Diversity and Merit

Allen Sirolly, Columbia University

Hongyao Ma, Columbia University

Yash Kanoria, Columbia University

10:30 am

Break

11:00 am

When Speed is of Essence: Perishable Goods Auctions

Isa E. Hafalir, University of Technology Sydney

Onur Kesten, The University of Sydney

Katerina Sherstyuk, University of Hawaii at Manoa

Cong Tao, University of Technology Sydney

Dynamic Threats to Credible Auctions

Martino Banchio, Bocconi University

Andrzej Skrzypacz, Stanford University

Frank Yang, Stanford University

12:30 pm

Lunch

2:00 pm

Centralizing Procurement: The Roles of Scale, Selection and Variety

Claudia Allende, Stanford University and NBER

Juan Pablo Atal, University of Pennsylvania and NBER

Rodrigo Carril, Universitat Pompeu Fabra

José Ignacio Cuesta, Stanford University and NBER

Andres Gonzalez-Lira, PUC-Chile

Missing Markets for Innovation: Evidence from New Uses for Existing Drugs

Eric Budish, University of Chicago and NBER

Maya M. Durvasula, Stanford University

Benjamin N. Roin, Independent Researcher

Heidi L. Williams, Dartmouth College and NBER

3:30 pm

Break

(30 minutes each)

4:00 pm

The Economics of Large Language Models: Token Allocation, Fine-Tuning and Optimal Pricing

Dirk Bergemann, Yale University

Alessandro Bonatti, Massachusetts Institute of Technology

Alex Smolin, Toulouse School of Economics

Truthful Aggregation of LLMs with an Application to Online Advertising

Ermis Nikiforos Soumalias, University of Zurich

Michael J. Curry, Harvard University

Sven Seuken, University of Zurich

Auction Design for Artificial-Intelligence-Based Sponsored Search

Lawrence Ausubel, University of Maryland, College Park

5:30 pm

Adjourn

6:00 pm

Reception and Dinner - Royal Sonesta Hotel (Skyline Room)

Saturday, October 18

8:30 am

Continental Breakfast

9:00 am

The First-Price Principle of Maximizing Economic Objectives

Byeong-hyeon Jeong, University of Zurich

Marek Pycia, University of Zurich

Stable Matchings with Switching Costs

Boris Pittel, Ohio State University

Kirill Rudov, University of California, Berkeley

10:30 am

Break

11:00 am

The Importance of Being Earnest (in Search Markets)

Brendan Daley, University of Colorado, Boulder

Jacob Sagi, Kenan Flagler Business School, UNC Chapel Hill

Intermediaries in Bargaining: Evidence from Business-to-Business Used-Car Inventory Negotiations

Bradley Larsen, Washington University in St Louis and NBER

Carol Hengheng Lu, Amazon, Inc.

Anthony Lee Zhang, University of Chicago

12:30 pm

Adjourn

National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members (4 economists: Steve Berry, Parag Pathak, Ed Leamer, and Sergiu Hart)

 Congratulations to all the new members, and to the four newly elected economists.

Of note: One of the economists is unusually young for this distinction, and one, who was not, passed away between the beginning and end of this year's election process.

National Academy of Sciences Elects Members and International Members

"The National Academy of Sciences announced today the election of 120 members and 30 international members in recognition of their distinguished and continuing achievements in original research.

 ...

Berry, Steven T.; David Swensen Professor, Department of Economics, Yale University, New Haven, Conn.

...

Pathak, Parag A.; Class of 1922 Professor of Economics, Department of Economics, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge

...

Elected posthumously to the Academy:

Leamer, Edward E.; professor in economics and statistics, Department of Economics, University of California, Los Angeles

...

Newly elected international member

Hart, Sergiu; professor emeritus of mathematics and economics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem (Israel)

The NBER celebrates market design

 From the NBER Reporter:

Working Group Report: Market Design  By Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak

Here are the introductory paragraphs (after which the report goes on to survey various areas of market design research).

"The Market Design Working Group, established in 2009 under the leadership of Susan Athey and Parag Pathak, is a preeminent research forum in the field of market design. The working group meets annually, alternating between Cambridge, Massachusetts, and Palo Alto, California, to present research that bridges theoretical economics and practical applications, all focused on what The Economist aptly characterized as “an intelligently designed invisible hand.”1 Research in market design has been celebrated in academic circles, as evidenced by recognitions like the 2012 Nobel Prize for work on matching markets and the 2020 Nobel Prize for auction theory, and has also been instrumental in catalyzing tangible reforms in real-world institutions and markets.

"One feature that sets market design apart from much of traditional economic theory is its unwavering commitment to practical applications. Market designers have developed a unique professional profile, equally at home in university lecture halls, hospital surgery wards, school committee meetings, and the boardrooms of technology companies. This versatility allows them to translate complex economic models and analyses into solutions for real-world problems. The field’s research has informed an impressive range of applications across various sectors of society. "

School choice, school quality, and student performance

 School choice, which allows children to move away from neighborhood schools, doesn't by itself improve school quality, although it may allow under-performing schools to become smaller, which may make them easier to fix, or to close.

Here are two  recent assessments of two different transportation options available to Boston public school students. Both conclude that school quality matters.

The first is an op-ed in the Boston Globe saying that school choice among Boston public schools has led to too much transportation and not enough innovation. (One of the authors, Parag Pathak, played a critical role in designing  Boston's current school choice system.)

Boston needs to reexamine school assignment system
Rather than investing in high-cost travel to send students to schools across the city, Boston should consider redirecting those funds toward improving schools close to home.
By Joshua Angrist, Parag Pathak and Amanda Schmidt 

"Boston’s school assignment system has changed considerably since the 1970s. Busing today is voluntary: Students can choose to attend schools far from where they live as well as a range of neighborhood schools. This choice allows historically disadvantaged students to attend schools with more peers of different backgrounds, an option that many choose. Roughly three-quarters of students opted to enroll in non-neighborhood schools in the 2000s and 2010s. A recent study by our organization, MIT Blueprint Labs, shows that today’s assignment system works in the sense of facilitating integration.

However, the costs of the current system are high. Among the 100 US school districts with the highest enrollment, Boston maintains the greatest per-student transportation costs in the country. As of 2021, the city spent over $2,000 per student on travel, equivalent to 8 percent of per-pupil school spending.

Furthermore, the educational gains afforded by district-wide choice are less clear than the integration gains. Our research, which uses credible, randomized methods designed by Blueprint Labs to gauge the causal effect of enrollment at different types of schools, paints a nuanced picture of the benefits of travel to non-neighborhood schools. Black and Hispanic students who travel to a non-neighborhood school have more white and Asian peers than they otherwise would. But travel does not impact learning as measured by MCAS scores, high school graduation rates, or college enrollment. We argue that this is because in the current BPS choice system — unlike the separate and unequal system of 1974 — the schools students travel to are no better than those nearby.

...

"The vast sums that now go to cross-neighborhood transportation might be better spent. The city might instead invest in programs with proven educational benefits. Saga Education’s effective high-dosage tutoring program, for example, cost just $1,800 per student in 2023. This spending may do more to close racial achievement gaps than non-neighborhood assignment.

"Some might counter that choice is intrinsically valuable and that neighborhood schools are likely to be more segregated than the schools that many historically disadvantaged families choose today. These undeniable benefits must be weighed, however, against alternative uses of the money that flows to busing. Boston schools have improved greatly since 1974: Dropout rates for all students have declined, and gaps by race, while still present, have narrowed. School assignment plans originating in 1974 may therefore be less useful today. It’s time to consider changing transportation policy in light of these changes in the city’s education landscape."

####### 

Here's a paper, about a different transportation program available to some* Boston students, which takes them out of Boston to schools in neighboring towns and cities in the metropolitan area.  Moving to those suburban schools apparently improves student performance more than moving from one Boston school to another.

 Busing to Opportunity? The Impacts of the METCO Voluntary School Desegregation Program on Urban Students of Color  by Elizabeth Setren, NBER Working Paper 32864, DOI 10.3386/w32864, August 2024

Abstract: School assignment policies are a key lever to increase access to high performing schools and to promote racial and socioeconomic integration. For over 50 years, the Metropolitan Council for Educational Opportunity (METCO) has bussed students of color from Boston, Massachusetts to relatively wealthier and predominantly White suburbs. Using a combination of digitized historical records and administrative data, I analyze the short and long run effects of attending a high-performing suburban school for applicants to the METCO program. I compare those with and without offers to enroll in suburban schools. I use a two-stage least squares approach that utilizes the waitlist assignment priorities and controls for a rich set of characteristics from birth records and application data. Attending a suburban school boosts 10th grade Math and English test scores by 0.13 and 0.21 standard deviations respectively. The program reduces dropout rates by 75 percent and increases on-time high school graduation by 13 percentage points. The suburban schools increase four-year college aspirations by 17 percentage points and enrollment by 21 percentage points. Participation results in a 12 percentage point increase in four-year college graduation rates. Enrollment increases average earnings at age 35 by $16,250. Evidence of tracking to lower performing classes in the suburban schools suggests these effects could be larger with access to more advanced coursework. Effects are strongest for students whose parents did not graduate college."

*"The program is very popular: 50 percent of Black youth in Boston applied and 20 percent of Latinx youth in the past 20 years"

...

"After demonstrating the comparability of students with and without offers, I estimate the impact of receiving an offer to the program and the impact of participating in the program. Offers to enroll in suburban districts serve as instrumental variables and all models control for approximate waitlist position using age at the time of application, gender, and race controls. Therefore the estimates compare the outcomes of those who enroll in METCO to applicants with similar demographics, who applied at similar times, but did not enroll because they were not selected from the waitlist."

NBER market design workshop at Stanford, tomorrow and Saturday

 Tomorrow and Saturday, market design at Stanford...

NBER Market Design Working Group Meeting, Fall 2024   DATE October 18-19, 2024

LOCATION SIEPR, Stanford University, Koret-Taube Conference Center, 366 Galvez Street

ORGANIZERS Michael Ostrovsky and Parag A. Pathak

  Format: 35 minute presentation, followed by 10 minute discussion.

Friday, October 18

9:00 am Continental Breakfast

9:30 am Designing Dynamic Reassignment Mechanisms: Evidence from GP Allocation, Ingrid Huitfeldt, University of Oslo, Victoria Marone, University of Texas at Austin and NBER, Daniel C. Waldinger, New York University and NBER

10:15 am Dynamic Matching with Post-allocation Service and its Application to Refugee Resettlement, Kirk C. Bansak, University of California, Berkeley, Soonbong Lee, Yale University, Vahideh Manshadi, Yale University, Rad Niazadeh, University of Chicago, Elisabeth Paulson, Harvard University

11:00 am  Break

11:30 am  Social Learning in Lung Transplant Decisions, Laura Doval, Columbia University, Federico Echenique, University of California, Berkeley, Wanying Huang, Monash University, Yi Xin, California Institute of Technology

12:15 pm  Endogenous Priority in Centralized Matching Markets: The Design of the Heart Transplant Waitlist, Kurt R. Sweat, Johns Hopkins University

1:00 pm Lunch

2:00 pm  Mechanism Reform: An Application to Child Welfare, E. Jason Baron, Duke University and NBER, Richard Lombardo, Harvard University, Joseph P. Ryan, University of Michigan, Jeongsoo Suh, Duke University, Quitze Valenzuela-Stookey, University of California, Berkeley

2:45 pm  The Competitive Core of Combinatorial Exchange, Simon Jantschgi, University of Oxford, Thanh T. Nguyen, Purdue University, Alexander Teytelboym, University of Oxford

3:30 pm  Break

4:00 pm  "Bid Shopping" in Procurement Auctions with Subcontracting(slides), Raymond Deneckere, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Daniel Quint, University of Wisconsin-Madison

4:45 pm Ads in Conversations: Market Thickness and Match Quality, Martino Banchio, Bocconi University, Aranyak Mehta, Google Research, Andres Perlroth, Google Research

5:30 pm Adjourn

7:00 pm  Group Dinner  Il Fornaio Palo Alto, 520 Cowper Street, Palo Alto, CA

Saturday, October 19

8:30 am Continental Breakfast

9:00 am Dynamic Auctions with Budget-Constrained Bidders: Evidence from the Online Advertising Market, Shunto J. Kobayashi, Boston University, Miguel Alcobendas, Yahoo Research

9:45 am The Welfare Effects of Sponsored Product Advertising, Chuan Yu, Harvard University

10:30 am Break

11:00 am An Empirical Analysis of the Interconnection Queue, Sarah Johnston, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Yifei Liu, University of Wisconsin-Madison, Chenyu Yang, University of Maryland

11:45 am  Iterative Network Pricing for Ridesharing Platforms Chenkai Yu, Columbia University, Hongyao Ma, Columbia University

12:30 pm  Lunch and Adjourn

Topics in Market Design: Econ 287/365: Winter quarter, Itai Ashlagi

Itai Ashlagi will be teaching Econ 287 this quarter, on topics in market design.  It's highly recommended.

He writes that the syllabus below is very tentative, and will depend in part on how many of the enrolled students took Econ 285 (Ostrovsky and Roth) in the Fall (back in 2023:-)

Topics in Market Design 2024, Itai Ashlagi

Market design is a field that links the rules of the of the marketplace to understand frictions, externalities and more generally economic outcomes. The course will provide theoretical foundations on assignment and matching mechanisms as well as mechanism design. There will be emphasis on theories at the intersection of economics, CS and operations as well as applications that arise in labor markets, organ allocation, platforms.

The class will further expose students to timely market design challenges and will we will host a few guest lectures. The class offers an opportunity to begin a research project. Students will reading critique papers, present papers and write a final paper.

Lectures: Monday 10:30am-1:20pm Shriram 052

Course requirements: (i) reading and writing critiques about papers, (ii), presenting papers in class, and (iii) a term paper.

Instructor: Itai Ashlagi. iashlagi@stanford.edu

Some potential papers for presenting:

Equity and Efficiency in Dynamic Matching: Extreme Waitlist Policies, Nikzad and Strack.

Eliminating Waste in Cadaveric Organ Allocation, Shi and Yin

Pick-an-object mechanisms, Bo and Hakimov

Monopoly without a monopolist, Huberman, Leshno and Moallemi

The College Portfolio Problem, Ali and Shorrer

Equal Pay for Similar Work, Passaro, Kojima, and Pakzad-Hurson

Auctions with Withdrawal Rights: A Foundation for Uniform Price, Haberman and Jagadessan.

Optimal matchmaking strategy in two-sided marketplaces, Shi

Practical algorithms and experimentally validated incentives for equilibrium-based fair division (ACEEI),

Budish, Gao, Othman, Rubinstein

Congestion pricing, carpooling, and commuter welfare, Ostrovsky and Schwarz

Artificial intelligence and auction design, Banchio and Skrzypacz

Selling to a no-regret buyer, Braverman et al.

Dynamic matching in overloaded waiting lists, Leshno

The regulation of queue size by levying tolls, Naor

Optimal search for the best alternative, Weitzman

Whether or not to open Pandora’s box, Doval

Descending price optimally coordinates search, Kleinberg, Waggoner, Weyl

Market Failure in Kidney Exchange? Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherstone and Omer Karaduman

Choice Screen Auctions, Michael Ostrovsky

Incentive Compatibility of Large Centralized Matching Markets, Lee

Tentative schedule:

Week 1: Two-sided matching, stability and large markets.

Week 2: One-sided matching, duality, optimization and constraints.

Week 3: Multi-item auctions, auction design, revenue equivalence, optimal auctions, interdependent

valuations.

Week 4: Congestion, dynamic matching.

Week 5: Waitlists, search and learning.

Week 6: Foundations of mechanism design.

Week 7: Robustness in implementation

Weeks 8-10: Projects

We will host several guest lectures. Presentations of papers will take place throughout the course.

Background references

1. List of (mostly applied) papers are given in a separate document.

2. Books

Roth, Alvin E.and Marilda A. Oliveira Sotomayor, Two-sided matching: A study in game-theoretic modeling and analysis. No. 18. Cambridge University Press, 1992.

Vijay Krishna, Auction Theory, 2010.

Tilman Borgers, An Introduction to Mechanism Design by Tilman Borgers.

Milgrom, Paul, Putting Auction Theory to Work, 2004.

3. Papers

(a) Introduction

Roth, Alvin E. The Economist as Engineer: Game Theory, Experimentation, and Computation as Tools for Design Economics. Econometrica, 70(4), 2002. 1341-1378.

Klemperer, Paul, What Really Matters in Auction Design?, Journal of Economic Perspectives, 16(1): 169-189, 2002.

Weitzman, Martin, Is the Price System or Rationing More Effective in Getting a Commodity to Those Who Need it Most?, The Bell Journal of Economics, 8, 517-524, 1977.

(b) Stable matching and assignment

Gale, David and Lloyd Shapley, College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage, American Mathematical Monthly, 69: 9-15,1962.

Roth and Sotomayor, Chapters 2-5.

Hylland, Aanund, and Richard Zeckhauser. The efficient allocation of individuals to positions, The Journal of Political Economy, 293-314,1979.

Roth, Alvin E., The Evolution of the Labor Market for Medical Interns and Residents: A Case Study in Game Theory. Journal of Political Economy, 92: 991-1016, 1984.

Kojimam, Fuhito and Parag A. Pathak. Incentives and stability in large two-sided matching markets. American Economic Review, 99:608-627, 2009

Abdulkadiroglu, Atila and Tayfun Sonmez. School choice: A mechanism design approach. American Economic Review, 93:729-747, 2003.

Abdulkadiroglu, Atila , Parag A. Pathak, and Alvin E. Roth. The New York City high school match. American Economic Review, 95:364-367, 2005.

Ashlagi, Itai, Yash Kanoria, and Jacob D. Leshno. Unbalanced random matching markets: The stark effect of competition, Journal of Political Economy,

Ashlagi, Itai and Peng Shi. Optimal allocation without money: An engineering approach. Management Science, 2015.

Peng Shi and Nick Arnosti. Design of Lotteries and Waitlists for Affordable Housing Allocation, Management Science, 2019.

Peng Shi, Assortment Planning in School Choice, 2019.

Ashlagi, Itai, and Afshin Nikzad. What matters in tie-breaking rules? how competition guides design, 2015.

(c) Auctions and revenue equivalence

Myerson, Roger Auction Design, Mathematics of Operations Research, 1981.

Milgrom, Paul. Putting Auction Theory to Work. Chapter 2-3.

W. Vickrey, Counterspeculation, auctions, and competitive sealed tenders, The Journal of Finance, 16(1) 8–37, 1961.

R. Myerson, Optimal auction design, Mathematics of Operations research, 1981.

J. Bulow and J. Roberts, The simple economics of optimal auctions, Journal of Political Economy, 1989.

J. Bulow and P. Klemperer, Auctions vs negotiations, American Economic Review, 1996.

P.R. McAfee and J. McMillan, Auctions and bidding, Journal of Economic Literature 1987.

P. Milgrom and R. Weber, A theory of auctions and competitive bidding, Econometrica, 1982.

Roth, A. E. and A. Ockenfels, Late-Minute Bidding and the Rules for Ending Second-Price Auctions: Evidence from eBay and Amazon.” American Economic Review, 92(4): 1093-1103, 2002.

(d) Mechanism design

Vickrey, William (1961): Counterspeculation, Auctions and Competitive Sealed Tenders. Journal of Finance, 16(1): 8-37.

Ausubel, Larry and Paul Milgrom, The Lovely but Lonely Vickrey Auction. in Cramton et. al Combinatorial Auctions, 2005.

J.C. Rochet, A necessary and sufficient condition for rationalizability in a quasi-linear context”, 1987.

K. Roberts, The characterization of implementable choice rules”, 1979.

F. Gul and E. Stacchetti, Walrasian equilibrium with gross substitutes, Journal of Economic Theory, 1999.

I. Ashlagi, M. Braverman, A,. Hassidim and D. Monderer, Monotonicity and implementability, Econometrica, 2011.

(e) Dynamic mechanism design and dynamic pricing

G. Gallego and G. Van Ryzin, Optimal dynamic pricing of inventories with stochastic demand over finite horizons. Management science, 40(8), 999-1020, 1994.

S. Board and A. Skrzypacz, Revenue management with forward-looking buyers, Unpublished manuscript, Stanford University,2010.

A. Gershkov, B. Moldovanu, P. Strack, Revenue Maximizing Mechanisms with Strategic Customers and Unknown, Markovian Demand

D. Bergemann and J. Valimaki, The dynamic pivot mechanism, Econometrica, 2010.

A. Gershkov and B. Moldovanu, Dynamic Revenue Maximization with Heterogeneous Objects: A Mechanism Design Approach, 168-198, 2009.

F. Gul, H. Sonnenschein, R. Wilson, Foundations of dynamic monopoly and the Coase conjecture, J. of Economic Theory, 1986.

D. Besanko and W. L. Whinston, Optimal price skimming by a monopolist facing rational consumers, Management Science, 1990.

(f) Dynamic matching

Itai Ashlagi and Alvin E. Roth. New challenges in multihospital kidney exchange. American Economic Review, 102:354-359, 2012

Nikhil Agarwal, Itai Ashlagi, Eduardo Azevedo, Clayton Featherston and Omer Karaduman. Market Failure in Kidney Exchange, 2018.

Anderson, R., Ashlagi, I., Gamarnik, D. and Kanoria, Efficient Dynamic Barter Exchange, Operations Research, 2015.

Mohammad Akbarpour, Shengwu Li, and Shayan Oveis Gharan. Dynamic matching market design. JPE, 2019.

Baccara, Mariagiovanna, SangMok Lee, and Leeat Yariv, Optimal dynamic matching, 2015.

Jacob Leshno, Dynamic Matching in Overloaded Waiting Lists, 2017.

More on Realtor's contracts and practices, and the recent court decision

 Here are some further articles with some details about the recent court decision that real estate contracts are anticompetitive. Both are from the Washington Post:

Jury awards $1.8B in realty case that could shake up brokerage commissions. A Kansas City jury unanimously found that the National Association of Realtors and other organizations conspired to artificially inflate home sale commissions   By Julian Mark 

"The plaintiffs pointed to an NAR rule that required sellers to make a nonnegotiable commission offer before listing homes on the property database, the Multiple Listing Service, or MLS, which feeds widely used real estate sites including Zillow. That commission hovers around 5 to 6 percent of the sale price and is paid by the home seller to the sellers’ agent and the buyers’ agent. If sellers do not agree to the commission terms, they go virtually unseen in the market, Ketchmark said.

"The rule has stifled competition and has resulted in higher prices, the plaintiffs alleged. They argued that if the rule were not in place, buyers would pay commissions to their own agents while buyers’ agents would have to compete by offering lower rates. The lawsuit pointed to countries whose total real estate commissions average 1 to 3 percent, such as the United Kingdom, Singapore, the Netherlands, Australia and Belgium.

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Real estate industry trembles over commissions on home sales. After jurors recently found that there was a scheme to inflate commissions, experts say changes could shake up the business  By Julian Mark

"The judge overseeing the case has the power to issue an injunction that could break up the century-old “bundled” or “cooperative” commissions system, in which sellers’ and buyers’ agents split a commission that typically ranges between 5 and 6 percent of the home sale price. 

...

"The cooperative compensation structure was established in 1913, when National Association of Real Estate Exchanges, the precursor to NAR, said its member agents should share commissions with agents that produced buyers, according to a 2015 study by economists Panle Jia Barwick and Maisy Wong. The commissions rate hit 5 percent in 1940 and has remained virtually unchanged ever since, according to the study.

"Commissions work differently in countries such as the United Kingdom, where sellers pay typically less than 2 percent, and buyers pay their own agents, according to the study."

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And here's the cited paper:

Barwick, Panle Jia, Parag A. Pathak, and Maisy Wong. 2017. "Conflicts of Interest and Steering in Residential Brokerage." American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 9 (3): 191-222.

Abstract: This paper documents uniformity in real estate commission rates offered to buyers' agents using 653,475 residential listings in eastern Massachusetts from 1998–2011. Properties listed with lower commission rates experience less favorable transaction outcomes: they are 5 percent less likely to sell and take 12 percent longer to sell. These adverse outcomes reflect decreased willingness of buyers' agents to intermediate low commission properties (steering), rather than heterogeneous seller preferences or reduced effort of listing agents. Offices with large market shares purchase a disproportionately small fraction of low commission properties. The negative outcomes for low commissions provide empirical support for regulatory concerns over steering.