An alternative characterization of top trading cycles (Q372362)

The author considers an assignment problem over a finite set of agents (for example, students) and a finite set of objects (schools). Each agent has a rational preference relation, and each object has a rational priority rule. The assignment problem is being realized as an allocation of the agents between the objects such that for each object is assigned at most one agent. There are different allocation mechanisms, which are functions from the product of the set of all (rational) possible preference relations and the set of all (rational) possible priority rules into the set of allocations. In the paper two allocation mechanisms are investigated: the top trading cycle (TTC) and the deferred acceptance (DA). These mechanisms are characterized in terms of strategy-proofness, Pareto efficiency, independence of irrelevant rankings (new condition, introduced here), mutual best, weak Maskin monotonicity, and others. According to the author, the obtained characterization of TTC and DA ``provides a positive answer to the motivating question: why use TTC instead of using DA, and why use TTC instead of using an alternative Pareto efficient, strategy-proof mechanism?''