Empirical Models of Non-Transferable Utility Matching

Empirical models play a distinctive role in the study of matching markets. They provide a quantitative framework for measuring heterogeneity in preferences for schools (Hastings et al., 2009), comparing school assignment mechanisms (Abdulkadiroglu et al., 2017; Agarwal and Somaini, 2018; Calsamiglia et al., 2020), understanding preferences in the marriage market (Chiappori et al., 2012), and measuring the effects of market power in the medical residence match (Agarwal, 2015). The approach taken by these papers is based on first estimating the preferences of the agents in these markets and then using those estimates to make economic conclusions. This chapter provides a unified framework for analyzing agents’ preferences in empirical matching models with non-transferable utility. Our objective is to provide a roadmap of the existing literature and highlight avenues for future research.