We assign a probabilistic evaluation to a firm as a measure, in the form of a probability distribution over [0,1], of the quality of the firm’s products. When two firms compete to develop a new product, a prospective investor can use the two evaluations to determine which firm is likely to...

In two-sided matching markets, stability can be costly. We define social welfare functions for matching markets and use them to formulate a definition of the price of stability. We then show that it is common to find a price tag attached to stability, and that the price of stability can be...

This paper studies welfare tradeoffs in two-sided, one-to-one matching markets. We begin by providing theoretical upper bounds on a utilitarian price of stability, and show that these bounds vary with the composition of participants’ ordinal preference lists. We then turn to simulation...

A symmetric difference metric topology on the collection of binary relations on a countably infinite set provides a new setting for the study of properties of preferences and, as an illustration, is used to lend credence and meaning to some simple intuitions about properties of binary relations....