Allocating via Priorities

We design a mechanism to allocate indivisible objects that combines procedural and distributive fairness. It associates each allocation problem a family of priorities to be used when determining how agents and objects should be matched. The selection of specific priorities, correlated with agents' preferences, guarantees the (ex-ante) equity of the outcome. The analysis of our mechanism, both from the efficiency and the strategic perspectives, enables us to connect the recent literature on random assignment (Bogomolnaia and Moulin, 2001) and the traditional analysis of matching mechanisms (Gale and Shapley, 1962).