Application Costs and Congestion in Matching Markets*

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: He, YingHua; Magnac, Thierry
• 署名单位: Rice University; Universite de Toulouse; Universite Toulouse 1 Capitole
• 刊物名称: ECONOMIC JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0013-0133
• DOI: 10.1093/ej/ueac038
• 发表日期: 2022
• 页码: 2918-2950
• 关键词: School choice; college admissions; demand; models; mechanisms; STABILITY

摘要

A matching market often requires recruiting agents, or 'programmes', to costly screen 'applicants', and congestion increases with the number of applicants to be screened. We investigate the role of application costs: higher costs reduce congestion by discouraging applicants from applying to certain programmes; however, they may harm match quality. In a multiple-elicitation experiment conducted in a real-life matching market, we implement variants of the Gale-Shapley deferred-acceptance mechanism with different application costs. Our experimental and structural estimates show that a (low) application cost effectively reduces congestion without harming match quality.