Serial dictatorship: The unique optimal allocation rule when information is endogenous

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Bade, Sophie
• 署名单位: University of London; Royal Holloway University London; Max Planck Society
• 刊物名称: THEORETICAL ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1933-6837
• DOI: 10.3982/TE1335
• 发表日期: 2015-05-01
• 页码: 385-410
• 关键词: Serial dictatorship; house allocation; endogenous information

摘要

The study of matching problems typically assumes that agents precisely know their preferences over the goods to be assigned. Within applied contexts, this assumption stands out as particularly counterfactual. Parents typically do invest a large amount of time and resources to find the best school for their children; doctors run costly tests to establish the best kidney for a given patient. In this paper, I introduce the assumption of endogenous information acquisition into otherwise standard house allocation problems. I find that there is a unique ex ante Pareto-optimal, strategy-proof, and nonbossy allocation mechanism: serial dictatorship. This stands in sharp contrast to the very large set of such mechanisms for house allocation problems without endogenous information acquisition.