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An econometrician's guide to optimal transport

Alfred Galichon, Marc Henry

arXiv 5 Apr 2026 · Econometrics

arXiv:2604.04227 · PDF · DOI · OpenAlex · Extracted main text

Abstract

We propose an overview of optimal transport theory and its applications to econometric methodology. This review is specifically designed for practitioners, be they econometric theorists or applied econometricians. The review of applications of optimal transport to econometrics is organized around the particular aspects of the mathematical theory of optimal transport they rely on.

Citation extraction

155
references
352
in-text mentions
156
distinct cited
27
self-citations
32,649
main-text words

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Most heavily cited references

The works this paper leans on most, across its whole bibliography — not restricted to papers in our corpus. Ranked by composite intensity, which combines how often a work is mentioned, how many sections mention it, and how much of that falls in the main text rather than the appendix.

ReferenceIntensityMentionsSectionsMain text
1Villani, Cédric (2008) Optimal transport: old and new0.874202100%
2Villani, Cédric (2003) Topics in optimal transportation0.874112100%
3Galichon, Alfred and Salanié, Bernard (2022) Cupid’s invisible hand: Social surplus and identification in matching models self0.87492100%
4Santambrogio, Filippo (2015) Optimal transport for applied mathematicians0.87492100%
5Chewi, Sinho and Niles-Weed, Jonathan and Rigollet, Philippe (2024) Statistical optimal transport0.87472100%
6Chernozhukov, Victor and Galichon, Alfred and Hallin, Marc and Henry… (2017) Monge–Kantorovich depth, quantiles, ranks and signs self0.81142100%
7Peyré, Gabriel and Cuturi, Marco and others (2019) Computational optimal transport: With applications to data science0.81142100%
8Carlier, Guillaume and Dupuy, Arnaud and Galichon, Alfred and Sun, Y… (2023) Sista: learning optimal transport costs under sparsity constraints self0.73732100%
9Galichon, Alfred (2016) Optimal transport methods in economics self0.73732100%
10Fan, Yanqin and Henry, Marc and Pass, Brendan and Rivero, Jorge A (2024) Multidimensional Inequality Measurement via Optimal Transport self0.69381100%

Showing the top 10 of 156 scored citations.

Cited by, within the corpus

arXiv econ.EM papers that cite this one, ranked by how heavily they lean on it.

Citing paperIntensityMentionsSections
1Distributional Change in Ordinal Data with Missing Observations: Minimal Mobility and Partial Identification0.40511