We would like to invite you to participate in Management Engineering (ME) Seminar.

1. When: April 4th (Thursday), 16:00 ~ 17:30
2. Where: Building 9, 3th #9303
3. Speaker: Prof. Jun Zhang (Nanjing Audit University, China)
4. Topic: Fractional Top Trading Cycle
5. Research field: Managerial Economics
* Lecture will be delivered in English.

[Abstract]
We generalize the Top Trading Cycle mechanism to solve random assignment problems. Specifically, we study the fractional endowment exchange problem in which each agent may own fractional amounts of multiple objects and each object may be owned by multiple agents. We propose a class of mechanisms. At every step, our mechanisms let agents point to most preferred objects and objects point to all of their owners. We use a linear equation system to describe how to trade the network generated at every step. The equation system is an instance of the classical Leontief input-output model. We provide an intuitive explanation of our mechanisms: at every step, there exist disjoint absorbing sets in the generated network and agents in each absorbing set trade endowments only among themselves. All of our mechanisms are individually rational and sd-efficient. We characterize those mechanisms satisfying desirable fairness properties including equal-endowment no envy and stronger notions. We apply the mechanisms to solve real-life problems including school choice with weak priorities and time bank.