Journal of Labor Economics· 2026Q1
Matching Function Equilibria with Partial Assignment: Existence, Uniqueness and Estimation
- 3citations
- Q1SCImago
- 2026year
Short summary
A new framework, 'matching function equilibria with partial assignment,' unifies models from matching and discrete choice, proving equilibrium existence and uniqueness and offering a parameter-free counterfactual estimation method.
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Key points
- Introduces 'matching function equilibria with partial assignment' as a unifying framework for diverse economic models.
- Proves the existence and uniqueness of equilibria within this framework.
- Develops an efficient algorithm for computing equilibria.
- Offers a parameter-free method for counterfactual matching equilibrium construction in specific models.
AI-generated from the title and abstract; the full text is not read.
Abstract
We argue that models coming from a variety of fields, such as matching models and discrete choice models among others, share a common structure that we call matching function equilibria with partial assignment. This structure includes an aggregate matching function and a system of nonlinear equations. We provide a proof of existence and uniqueness of an equilibrium and propose an efficient algorithm to compute it. For a subclass of matching models, we also develop a new parameter-free approach for constructing the counterfactual matching equilibrium. It has the advantage of not requiring parametric estimation when computing counterfactuals. We use our procedure to analyze the impact of the elimination of the Social Security Student Benefit Program in 1982 on the marriage market in the United States. We estimate several candidate models from our general class of matching functions and select the best fitting model using information based criterion.
The authors' abstract, as published at the source. Journal of Labor Economics, 2026 · DOI ↗
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Field: Economics and Econometrics
Economics and EconometricsEconomics, Econometrics and Finance