Telling the Truth May Not Pay Off

Sebastian Braun, Nadja Dwenger and Dorothea Kübler

No 759, Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research

Abstract: We investigate the matching algorithm used by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions (ZVS) in medicine and related subjects. This mechanism consists of three procedures based on final grades from school ("Abiturbestenverfahren", "Auswahlverfahren der Hochschulen") and on waiting time ("Wartezeitverfahren"). While these procedures differ in the criteria applied for admission they all make use of priority matching. In priority matching schemes, it is not a dominant strategy for students to submit their true preferences. Thus, strategic behaviour is expected. Using the full data set of applicants, we are able to detect some amount of strategic behaviour which can lead to inefficient matching. Alternative ways to organize the market are briefly discussed.

Keywords: Matching; university admissions; strategic behaviour (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D2 D78 I29 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 28 p.
Date: 2007
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-edu, nep-gth and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.diw.de/documents/publikationen/73/diw_01.c.78307.de/dp759.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:diw:diwwpp:dp759

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin from DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Bibliothek ().