Complementarities in childcare allocation under priorities

TL;DR

This paper proposes an adapted Deferred Acceptance mechanism for childcare allocation that ensures strategy-proofness and optimal stable matchings within a natural preference domain, addressing practical allocation challenges.

Contribution

It introduces a new preference domain and adapts the Deferred Acceptance algorithm to improve childcare allocation, ensuring strategy-proofness and stability.

Findings

Strategy-proofness within the preference domain

Existence of stable matchings under the new model

Practical implications for allocating indivisible bundles with complementarities

Abstract

We investigate the allocation of children to childcare facilities and propose solutions to overcome limitations in the current allocation mechanism. We introduce a natural preference domain and a priority structure that address these setbacks, aiming to enhance the allocation process. To achieve this, we present an adaptation of the Deferred Acceptance mechanism to our problem, which ensures strategy-proofness within our preference domain and yields the student-optimal stable matching. Finally, we provide a maximal domain for the existence of stable matchings using the properties that define our natural preference domain. Our results have practical implications for allocating indivisible bundles with complementarities.