Incomplete information and singleton cores in matching markets

We study ordinal Bayesian Nash equilibria of stable mechanisms in centralized matching markets under incomplete information. We show that truth-telling is an ordinal Bayesian Nash equilibrium of the revelation game induced by a common belief and a stable mechanism if and only if all the profiles in the support of the common belief have singleton cores. Our result matches the observations of Roth and Peranson [The redesign of the matching market for American physicians: some engineering aspects of economic design, Amer. Econ. Rev. 89 (1999) 748-780] in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) in the United States: (i) the cores of the profiles submitted to the clearinghouse are small and (ii) while truth-telling is not a dominant strategy most participants in the NRMP truthfully reveal their preferences. © 2006 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.