What's the Matter with Tie-Breaking? Improving Efficiency in School Choice

Aytek Erdil and Haluk Ergin

American Economic Review, 2008, vol. 98, issue 3, 669-89

Abstract: In several school choice districts in the United States, the student proposing deferred acceptance algorithm is applied after indifferences in priority orders are broken in some exogenous way. Although such a tie-breaking procedure preserves stability, it adversely affects the welfare of the students since it introduces artificial stability constraints. Our main finding is a polynomial-time algorithm for the computation of a student-optimal stable matching when priorities are weak. The idea behind our construction relies on a new notion which we call a stable improvement cycle. We also investigate the strategic properties of the student-optimal stable mechanism.

JEL-codes: H75 I21 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2008
Note: DOI: 10.1257/aer.98.3.669
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (190)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/aer.98.3.669 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/june08/20060525_data.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: What`s the Matter with Tie-breaking? Improving Efficiency in School Choice (2007)
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:98:y:2008:i:3:p:669-89

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 ().