Asylum Assignment and Burden-Sharing

TL;DR

This paper studies the complex process of matching asylum seekers to countries, considering preferences, capacities, and burden-sharing, and finds conditions under which stable and strategy-proof allocations can be achieved.

Contribution

It introduces a unique choice rule for matching that balances priorities and capacities, and analyzes the impact of heterogeneous burden-sizes on stability and strategy-proofness.

Findings

Cumulative offer mechanism guarantees stability and strategy-proofness with identical burden-sizes.

Heterogeneous burden-sizes can prevent achieving both stability and strategy-proofness.

A new choice rule effectively addresses feasibility and burden-sharing in asylum matching.

Abstract

We analyze the problem of matching asylum seekers to member states, incorporating wait times, preferences of asylum seekers, and the priorities, capacities, and burden-sharing commitments of member states. We identify a unique choice rule that addresses feasibility while balancing priorities and capacities. We examine the effects of both homogeneous and heterogeneous burden-sizes among asylum seekers on the matching process. Our main result shows that when all asylum seekers are treated as having identical burden-sizes, the asylum-seeker-proposing cumulative offer mechanism guarantees both stability and strategy-proofness. In contrast, when burden-sizes vary, there are scenarios where achieving stability or strategy-proofness is no longer possible.