Strategy-proofness and stability of the Boston mechanism: An almost impossibility result

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Kumano, Taro
• 署名单位: Yokohama National University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF PUBLIC ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0047-2727
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2013.05.008
• 发表日期: 2013
• 页码: 23-29
• 关键词: Boston mechanism; STABILITY; strategy-proofness; Quasi-cyclicity; Strong acyclicity

摘要

Public school systems generally use one of the three competing mechanisms - the Boston mechanism, the deferred acceptance mechanism and the top trading cycle mechanism - for assigning students to specific schools. Although the literature generally claims that the Boston mechanism is Pareto efficient but neither stable nor strategy-proof, this study delineates a subset of school priority structures for which it fulfills all three criteria. We show that the Boston mechanism is stable if and only if it is strategy-proof if and only if the priority structure is strongly acyclic. However, we find that the condition of strong acyclicity is nearly impossible to satisfy: any priority structure is quasi-cyclic whenever there are two schools whose admission quotas are less than the number of students seeking admission. (C) 2013 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.