Coalitional Permutation Manipulations in the Gale-Shapley Algorithm

TL;DR

This paper investigates permutation manipulations in the Gale-Shapley algorithm, presenting an efficient method to achieve stable, Pareto-optimal matchings through inconspicuous strategies, and analyzing the computational complexity of better manipulations.

Contribution

It introduces an efficient algorithm for coalition manipulation that results in stable, Pareto-optimal matchings and proves the NP-completeness of finding strictly better manipulations.

Findings

Efficient algorithm for stable, Pareto-optimal coalition manipulation

Inconspicuous strategy profiles can form Nash equilibria

Finding strictly better manipulations is NP-complete

Abstract

In this paper, we consider permutation manipulations by any subset of women in the men-proposing version of the Gale-Shapley algorithm. This paper is motivated by the college admissions process in China. Our results also answer an open problem on what can be achieved by permutation manipulations. We present an efficient algorithm to find a strategy profile such that the induced matching is stable and Pareto-optimal (in the set of all achievable stable matchings) while the strategy profile itself is inconspicuous. Surprisingly, we show that such a strategy profile actually forms a Nash equilibrium of the manipulation game. In the end, we show that it is NP-complete to find a manipulation that is strictly better for all members of the coalition. This result demonstrates a sharp contrast between weakly better off outcomes and strictly better-off outcomes.