In 1962, Gale and Shapley introduced the concept of stable marriages and proved their existence [1]. Since then, the statement of the stability problem has been highly generalized. And a lot of proofs has emerged for the existence in these more general statements. It’s time to review them and identify the similarities and differences.
First, we will briefly discuss the classical case, because the existence proofs in the general case grew out of it. Or rather, from the idea of ”deferred acceptance”. When the best of the proposed contracts is temporarily retained until a better offer is received.
