Why Fake Money Is Better than Real Money at Feeding the Hungry
An esoteric market idea revolutionized food banks. What else could it do?
Why Fake Money Is Better than Real Money at Feeding the HungryPaper The Combinatorial Assignment Problem: Approximate Competitive Equilibrium from Equal Incomes
This paper proposes a new mechanism for combinatorial assignment - for example, assigning schedules of courses to students - based on an approximation to competitive equilibrium from equal incomes (CEEI) in which incomes are unequal but arbitrarily close together. The main technical result is an existence theorem for approximate CEEI. The mechanism is approximately efficient, satisfies two new criteria of outcome fairness, and is strategy proof in large markets. Its performance is explored on real data, and it is compared to alternatives from theory and practice: all other known mechanisms are either unfair ex post or manipulable even in large markets, and most are both manipulable and unfair.
Published in: Journal of Political Economy
- Authored by
- 2011
- Social Sector Theory
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