Eur. Phys. J. B 71, 565-571 (2009)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2009-00315-0

The role of a matchmaker in buyer-vendor interactions

Physics Department, University of Fribourg, Pérolles, 1700 Fribourg, SwitzerlandLab of Information Economy and Internet Research, University of Electronic Science and Technology of China, 610054, Chengdu, P.R. China

Corresponding author: ^a matus.medo@unifr.ch

Received: 15 January 2009
Revised: 3 July 2009
Published online: 26 September 2009

Abstract

We consider a simple market where a vendor offers multiple variants of a certain product and preferences of both the vendor and potential buyers are heterogeneous and possibly even antagonistic. Optimization of the joint benefit of the vendor and the buyers turns the toy market into a combinatorial matching problem. We compare the optimal solutions found with and without a matchmaker, examine the resulting inequality between the market participants, and study the impact of correlations on the system.