On the existence of stable contract systems

TL;DR

This paper reviews the evolution of stable contract systems from the classical stable marriage problem, analyzing various existence proofs and their underlying ideas, especially the deferred acceptance concept.

Contribution

It provides a comprehensive review of generalized stable contract systems, highlighting the similarities and differences in their existence proofs and foundational ideas.

Findings

Classical stable marriage existence proof based on deferred acceptance

Generalized stable contract systems share core proof ideas

Identification of key differences in existence proofs across models

Abstract

In 1962, Gale and Shapley \cite{GS} introduced the concept of stable marriages and proved their existence. Since then, the statement of the stability problem has been highly generalized. And a lot of proofs has emerged for the existence in these more general statements. It's time to review them and identify the similarities and differences. First, we will briefly discuss the classical case, because the existence proofs in the general case grew out of it. Or rather, from the idea of "deferred acceptance". When the best of the proposed contracts is temporarily retained until a better offer is received.