The Evolution of Roommate Networks: A Comment on Jackson and Watts JET (2002)

• Authors: Bettina Klaus, Flip Klijn and Markus Walzl
• BSE Working Paper: 296 | February 2026
• JEL codes: C62, C78
• Networks, February 2026

We extend Jackson and Watts’s (2002) result on the coincidence of S-stochastically stable and core stable networks from marriage problems to roommate problems. In particular, we show that the existence of a side-optimal core stable network, on which the proof of Jackson and Watts (2002, Theorem 2) hinges, is not crucial for their result.