Cycles and Rationalization

Abstract

This paper studies the composition of the Paretian allocation set in the context of a finite number of agents and a finite number of indivisible goods. Each agent receives at most one good and no monetary compensation is possible (typically called the house allocation problem). I introduce the concept of a cycle which is a sequence of allocations where each allocation is linked to the following allocation in the sequence by the same switch of goods between a subset of agents. I characterize the profiles of agent preferences when the Paretian set has cycles.