Fatma Aslan - The Conference Table Problem

Speaker: Fatma Aslan (Budapest University of Technology and Economics)

Room: B503

Day: 06/10/2026 

Time: 15:15

Title: The Conference Table Problem (joint work with Jean Lainé and Remzi Sanver)

Abstract: We study the conference table problem, a hedonic seat-arrangement model in which individuals with strict ordinal preferences over colleagues must be seated on a cycle graph, with each individual assigned exactly two neighbors. Since a table determines a pair of neighbors for each individual, comparing tables requires extending preferences over individuals to preferences over pairs of individuals. We focus on the separable extension and its coarsenings, and investigate the existence of swap-stable tables, arrangements at which no two individuals benefit from exchanging seats.

Swap-stability is not guaranteed in general, so our main contribution is establishing several domain restrictions that are sufficient for swap-stability. We show that swap-stability under the strict separable extension is guaranteed without any domain restriction. We further study swap-stability under a property-rights refinement and discuss its mutual compatibility with strategy-proofness and Pareto efficiency.