Efficient stable matching in school choice

Takuya Iimura and Ryuta Isogaya

Economics Letters, 2025, vol. 254, issue C

Abstract: We show, in the context of school choice, that when the lists of preferences and priority orderings are acyclic in the sense of Gutin et al. (2023), the outcomes of the deferred acceptance and top trading cycle algorithms coincide. This implies that the student-optimal stable matching is efficient. Furthermore, we show that if schools’ priority orderings of students are based on the sum of school-independent basic points and school-dependent additional points, and if students’ preferences align with these additional points, then the lists are acyclic. Additionally, if students can and do decline the addition of points that their preferences do not align with, then the lists become acyclic, regardless of the preference list.

Keywords: School choice; Stability and efficiency of matching; Top trading cycle algorithm; Acyclicity (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0165176525002599
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

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:eee:ecolet:v:254:y:2025:i:c:s0165176525002599

DOI: 10.1016/j.econlet.2025.112422

Access Statistics for this article

Economics Letters is currently edited by Economics Letters Editorial Office

More articles in Economics Letters from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().