Shapley-Scarf Markets with Objective Indifferences
Theoretical Economics
2026-02-03 v3
Abstract
Top trading cycles with fixed tie-breaking (TTC) has been suggested to deal with indifferences in object allocation problems. Unfortunately, under general indifferences, TTC is neither Pareto efficient nor group strategy-proof. Furthermore, it may not select an allocation in the core of the market, even when the core is non-empty. However, when indifferences are agreed upon by all agents (``objective indifferences''), TTC maintains Pareto efficiency, group strategy-proofness, and core selection. Further, we characterize objective indifferences as the most general setting where TTC maintains these properties.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2503.18144,
title = {Shapley-Scarf Markets with Objective Indifferences},
author = {Will Sandholtz and Andrew Tai},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2503.18144},
year = {2026}
}