The Role of Characterizations in Market Design

The search for desirable allocation methods has long been formalized using an axiomatic approach. We contrast how this approach should be applied within the context of general, abstract analyses versus the analysis of specific market design problems. Specifically, we discuss how the role of axiomatic characterization results might differ across these two contexts. We conclude that characterization results, though informative, should not be viewed as a primary objective in market design research. We illustrate this point using a new result in an allocation problem that, abstractly, represents a hypothetical market design problem.