Matching Markets applied to the Refugee issue in Europe
https://wol.iza.org/uploads/articles/244/pdfs/can-market-mechanisms-solve-refugee-crisis.pdf
https://www.theguardian.com/world/2018/jun/27/eu-migration-crisis-what-are-the-issues
The paper I read is essentially a proposed solution the overcrowding of Refugees coming from the middle east into Europe. For this issue, I decided to do more information seeking about the problem, so therefore I also included a Guardian article related to refugees. Clearly the main issue that is affecting Europe is the fact that Refugees are coming in at a high rate, and there is no clear organisation which sorts the refugees into different European countries. One country who is feeling the pressure the most is Germany. Germany has been getting a large influx of Refugees from the middle east and other European countries. Countries such as Italy are sending refugees that landed in Italy to Germany because of internal reasons, leaving Germany extremely pressured by this issue. From the paper, the proposition is basically to treat the refugees and countries as a matching market so they can be assigned properly and not cause to many issues.
So to set up the problem, we will have Refugees as customers and the countries as the items. Firstly, for the countries we see if there are refugees allowed, and the quota that they are allowed to bring in, and set initial prices to the countries. (i.e. country that doesn’t have refugee acceptance will get a price of infinity). Then we see what the refugee prefers, and what refugee countries prefer and base the preference of the customer on this combination. This problem will be a little different from our usual matching problem, because items can now take multiple customers, and some items will have no customers. However, if we can optimise social output, while staying within the countries’ quotas, we will have a solution to the crisis in Europe.
So some key benefits to this solution is that refugees will be sorted and distributed more efficiently and will not cause strain to the host country. Another key benefit is the fact that only refugee accepting countries will get refugees, leading to the refugees being treated better, upping their quality of life. Although this solution is clearly a simplified solution to the actual situation (no guarantee that it will work), it is a good step to move toward, for both the countries and the refugees.