Stable matching mechanisms are not obviously strategy-proof

Many two-sided matching markets, from labor markets to school choice programs, use a clearinghouse based on the applicant-proposing deferred acceptance algorithm, which is well known to be strategy-proof for the applicants. Nonetheless, a growing amount of empirical evidence reveals that applicants misrepresent their preferences when this mechanism is used. This paper shows that no mechanism that implements a stable matching is obviously strategy-proof for any side of the market, a stronger incentive property than strategy-proofness introduced by Li (2015). A stable mechanism that is obviously strategy-proof for applicants is introduced for the case in which agents on the other side have acyclical preferences. Our findings suggest that strategic reasoning in two-sided markets requires more cognitive effort by participants than in one-sided markets.