Assignment mechanisms: Common preferences and information acquisition

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Artemov, Georgy
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF ECONOMIC THEORY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0022-0531
• DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105370
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: School choice; information acquisition; deferred acceptance; Immediate Acceptance

摘要

I study costly information acquisition in a two-sided matching problem, such as matching applicants to schools. An applicant's utility is a sum of common and idiosyncratic components. The idiosyncratic component is unknown to the applicant but can be learned at a cost. As applicants learn, their preferences over schools become more heterogeneous, improving match quality. In my stylized environment, too few applicants acquire information in an ordinal strategy-proof mechanism. Subsidies, disclosure of applicants' priorities, and affirmative action-like policies lead to higher information acquisition and Pareto improvements. Learning may also decrease when an ordinal strategy-proof mechanism replaces an Immediate Acceptance mechanism. (c) 2021 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.