From Immediate Acceptance to Deferred Acceptance: Effects on School Admissions and Achievement in England

Camille Terrier, Parag A. Pathak and Kevin Ren

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics, 2026, vol. 18, issue 1, 44-87

Abstract: Countries and cities around the world increasingly rely on centralized systems for student placement. Two algorithms, deferred acceptance (DA) and immediate acceptance (IA), are widespread. We investigate the effects of the national ban of IA in England. Before the ban, 49 local authorities used DA and 16 used IA; all switched to DA afterward. We find that the elimination of IA reduces measures of school quality for low-SES students more than high-SES students.This effect is primarily driven by a decrease in low-SES admissions at selective schools. Our findings point to an unintended consequence of the IA to DA transition.

JEL-codes: D82 H52 H75 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/app.20230056 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E208501V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/materials/24321 (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: From immediate acceptance to deferred acceptance: effects on school admissions and achievement in England (2021)
Working Paper: From Immediate Acceptance to Deferred Acceptance: Effects on School Admissions and Achievement in England (2021)
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:aea:aejapp:v:18:y:2026:i:1:p:44-87

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/app.20230056

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Applied Economics is currently edited by Alexandre Mas

More articles in American Economic Journal: Applied Economics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().