We apply the efficiency axioms of [Mortensen, D. (1982). Efficiency of mating, racing and related games. American Economic Review, 72 968–979.] to a set of matching games involving coordination frictions between buyers. These games include markets with finite numbers of buyers and sellers and...

We show that, in settings where meetings can be multilateral, the allocation rule proposed by Mortensen (1982) can be relatively straightforward to implement: as a local auction conducted by sellers. The implications of using this mechanism in a simple model of the labor market are then...

We present a competing-auction theory of the labor market, where job candidates auction their labor services to employers. An equilibrium matching function emerges which has many of the features commonly assumed, including constant returns to scale in large economies. The auction mechanism also...

We analyze monetary exchange in a model that allows for directed search and multilateral matches. We consider environments with divisible goods and indivisible money, and compare the results with those in models that use random matching and bilateral bargaining. Two different pricing mechanisms...