Maximum Matchings and Popularity

Abstract: Let $G$ be a bipartite graph where every node has a strict ranking of its neighbors. For every node, its preferences over neighbors extend naturally to preferences over matchings. Matching $N$ is more popular than matching $M$ if the number of nodes that prefer $N$ to $M$ is more than the number that prefer $M$ to $N$. A maximum matching $M$ in $G$ is a "popular max-matching" if there is no maximum matching in $G$ that is more popular than $M$. Such matchings are relevant in applications where the set of admissible solutions is the set of maximum matchings and we wish to find a best maximum matching as per node preferences. It is known that a popular max-matching always exists in $G$. Here we show a compact extended formulation for the popular max-matching polytope. So when there are edge costs, a min-cost popular max-matching in $G$ can be computed in polynomial time. This is in contrast to the min-cost popular matching problem which is known to be NP-hard. We also consider Pareto-optimality, which is a relaxation of popularity, and show that computing a min-cost Pareto-optimal matching/max-matching is NP-hard.