 The revival of cooperative game theory as site of renewed interest has occurred because policy problems have been encountered that, unlike the original toy illustration using the all-straights marriage market, satisfy the model’s crucial assumptions. Leading instances are matching university applicants and universities, and matching people needing organ transplants with donors (see  Roth 2015).  In these markets, there is no ambivalence about partitioning the sets to be matched. Ordinal preferences are the relevant ones: universities don’t auction off places to the highest bidder (or at least not in general), and organs are not for sale (or at least not legally). The models are really applied, and they demonstrably have improved efficiency and saved lives.