| This thesis is a collection of essays on the incentive, fairness, and solidarity properties of recommendations to different economic problems such as queueing, matching, and cost allocation.;In Chapter 1, we consider queueing problems. We prove that no rule is Pareto-efficient and coalitional strategy-proof. We identify the class of rules that satisfy Pareto-efficiency, equal treatment of equals, and strategy-proofness. Among multi-valued rules, there is a unique rule that satisfies Pareto-efficiency, anonymity, and strategy-proofness..;In Chapter 2, we consider two-sided matching markets with contracts. We prove that the stable correspondence is the only solution that satisfies unanimity, population monotonicity, and Maskin-monotonicity. If a rule satisfies unanimity, both forms of population monotonicity and a weak notion of consistency , then it is a subsolution of the stable correspondence. We also analyze immunity of solutions to strategic behavior such as to misreporting the availability of contracts held by the firms, and misrepresenting preferences by workers and firms. We introduce destruction-proofness, and study destruction-proofness and strategy-proofness. We show that if the firms' preferences satisfy the substitute condition, then the worker-optimal solution is not destruction-proof and the firm-optimal solution is destruction-proof. If the firms' preferences satisfy the substitute condition, the law of aggregate demand, and the top-dominance condition then the worker-optimal solution is the only solution satisfying stability and strategy-proofness. .;In Chapter 3, we consider a class of cost sharing problems with the following features: agents are ordered in terms of their needs for a public facility; satisfying an agent implies satisfying all agents with smaller needs than his at no extra cost. The "sequential equal contributions" rule assigns each agent using a given segment to contribute equally to the cost of the segment and to pay the total of the contributions of each segment that the agent uses. We show that the sequential equal contributions rule is the only rule satisfying equal treatment of equals, independence of predecessors , and smallest-cost consistency and it is the only rule satisfying individual rationality, cost monotonicity, and smallest-cost consistency.. |
