The instability of matching with overconfident agents

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Pan, Siqi
• 署名单位: University of Melbourne
• 刊物名称: GAMES AND ECONOMIC BEHAVIOR
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0899-8256
• DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.10.001
• 发表日期: 2019
• 页码: 396-415
• 关键词: School choice matching; College admission; overconfidence; GENDER

摘要

Many centralized college admissions markets allocate seats to students based on their performance on a single standardized exam. The exam's measurement error can cause the exam-derived priorities to deviate from colleges' aptitude-based preferences. Previous literature proposes to combine pre-exam preference submission with a Boston algorithm (a PreExam-BOS mechanism). This paper examines the proposed mechanism in an experiment where students are not fully informed of their relative aptitudes. The results show pre-exam preference submission is distorted by overconfidence and PreExam-BOS fails to achieve stable matching with respect to aptitudes. Compared to a post-score Serial Dictatorship mechanism, which is robust to overconfidence but more prone to the exam's measurement error, PreExam-BOS creates more mismatches and a greater variance in the extent of mismatches: some students receive a large advantage while others are hurt considerably. Moreover, PreExam-BOS rewards overconfidence and punishes underconfidence. The observed overconfidence cannot be mitigated with an improved information condition. (C) 2018 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.