Identifying the Harm of Manipulable School-Choice Mechanisms

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Dur, Umut; Hammond, Robert G.; Morrill, Thayer
• 署名单位: North Carolina State University
• 刊物名称: AMERICAN ECONOMIC JOURNAL-ECONOMIC POLICY
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1945-7731
• DOI: 10.1257/pol.20160132
• 发表日期: 2018
• 页码: 187-213
• 关键词: Boston mechanism; Sophisticated players; design approach; public-schools; match; preferences; EFFICIENCY; QUALITY; sincere

摘要

An important but under-explored issue in student assignment procedures is heterogeneity in the level of strategic sophistication among students. Our work provides the first direct measure of which students rank schools following their true preference order (sincere students) and which rank schools by manipulating their true preferences (sophisticated students). We present evidence that our proxy for sophistication captures systematic differences among students. Our results demonstrate that sophisticated students are 9.6 percentage points more likely to be assigned to one of their preferred schools. Further, we show that this large difference in assignment probability occurs because sophisticated students systematically avoid over-demanded schools.