The Limits of Incentives in Economic Matching Procedures

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Hassidim, Avinatan; Romm, Assaf; Shorrer, Ran, I
• 署名单位: Bar Ilan University; Hebrew University of Jerusalem; Pennsylvania Commonwealth System of Higher Education (PCSHE); Pennsylvania State University; Pennsylvania State University - University Park
• 刊物名称: MANAGEMENT SCIENCE
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0025-1909
• DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2020.3591
• 发表日期: 2021
• 关键词: behavior and behavioral decision making; microeconomic behavior; education systems; inference

摘要

Organizations often require agents' private information to achieve critical goals such as efficiency or revenue maximization, but frequently it is not in the agents' best interest to reveal this information. Strategy-proof mechanisms give agents incentives to truthfully report their private information. In the context of matching markets, they eliminate agents' incentives to misrepresent their preferences. We present direct field evidence of preference misrepresentation under the strategy-proof deferred acceptance in a high-stakes matching environment. We show that applicants to graduate programs in psychology in Israel often report that they prefer to avoid receiving funding, even thou gh the mechanism preserves privacy and funding comes with no strings attached and constitutes a positive signal of ability. Surveys indicate that other kinds of preference misrepresentation are also prevalent. Preference misrepresentation in the field is associated with weaker applicants. Our findings have important implications for practitioners designing matching procedures and for researchers who study them.