Welfare Distribution in Two-sided Random Matching Markets

Abstract: We study the welfare structure in two-sided large random matching markets. In the model, each agent has a latent personal score for every agent on the other side of the market and her preferences follow a logit model based on these scores. Under a contiguity condition, we provide a tight description of stable outcomes. First, we identify an intrinsic fitness for each agent that represents her relative competitiveness in the market, independent of the realized stable outcome. The intrinsic fitness values correspond to scaling coefficients needed to make a latent mutual matrix bi-stochastic, where the latent scores can be interpreted as a-priori probabilities of a pair being matched. Second, in every stable (or even approximately stable) matching, the welfare or the ranks of the agents on each side of the market, when scaled by their intrinsic fitness, have an approximately exponential empirical distribution. Moreover, the average welfare of agents on one side of the market is sufficient to determine the average on the other side. Overall, each agent's welfare is determined by a global parameter, her intrinsic fitness, and an extrinsic factor with exponential distribution across the population.