The Mechanism Is Truthful, Why Aren't You?

Avinatan Hassidim, Déborah Marciano, Assaf Romm and Ran Shorrer

American Economic Review, 2017, vol. 107, issue 5, 220-24

Abstract: Honesty is the best policy in the face of a strategy-proof mechanism--irrespective of others' behavior, the best course of action is to report one's preferences truthfully. We review evidence from different markets in different countries and find that a substantial percentage of participants do not report their true preferences to the strategy-proof Deferred Acceptance mechanism. Two recurring correlates of preference misrepresentation are lower cognitive ability and the expectation of stronger competition. We evaluate possible explanations, which we hope will inform practicing market designers.

JEL-codes: D12 D47 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2017
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.p20171027
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (45)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/aer.p20171027 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/articles/attachments?retrie ... RhAOYneDltGkginG9z3C (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: The Mechanism is Truthful, Why aren?t You?
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:aecrev:v:107:y:2017:i:5:p:220-24

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

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert (mpa@aeapubs.org).