Dinko Dimitrov (Saarland University) – Seemingly Informative Matching Mechanisms

We consider a model where market participants can observe the identity of the agents they can be matched with but not their types. A mechanism generates a matching and an announcement at each reported type profile. For the case of one-sided incomplete information, we fully characterize the set of matching states which are both minimally informative and stable, and show that not every assortative matching mechanism is ex-post incentive compatible. Our main result states that every seemingly informative assortative matching mechanism is ex-post incentive compatible. Such mechanisms become manipulable when incompleteness of information applies to both sides of the market.