MEDIEVAL MATCHING MARKETS

Medieval Matching Markets

This paper studies the market microstructure of pre-industrial Europe. In particular we investigate the institution of the broker in markets and fairs, and develop a unique data set of approximately 1100 sets of brokerage rules in 42 merchant towns in Central and Western Europe from the late 13th to the end of the 17th century. We show that towns implemented brokerage as an e¢ cient matchmaking...

Medieval Matching Markets1

This paper presents insights on the market microstructure of the late Middle Ages. In particular it looks into the institution of the broker on medieval markets and fairs. It argues that the broker was a key player in the solution of a two-sided matching market problem. The broker’s obligation was to match sellers to buyers. Medieval market makers, i.e. the town o¢ cials set up rules for broker...

Essays on Matching Markets

Competing Dynamic Matching Markets

While dynamic matching markets are usually modeled in isolation, assuming that every agent to be matched enters that market, in many real-world settings there exist rival matching markets with overlapping pools of agents. We extend a framework of dynamic matching due to Akbarpour et al. [2] to characterize outcomes in cases where two such rival matching markets compete with each other. One mark...

Signaling in Matching Markets

We evaluate the e ect of costless preference signaling in two-sided matching markets between rms and workers. We consider a game of incomplete information with rm segments. Workers agree on the ranking of rms across segments, but have idiosyncratic and uniformly distributed preferences within segments. Firm preferences over workers are idiosyncratic and uniformly distributed. Each worker can se...