How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field

Christian Basteck (), Bettina Klaus and Dorothea Kübler ()

Games and Economic Behavior, 2021, vol. 129, issue C, 198-237

Abstract: School authorities in the UK and the US advocate the use of lotteries to desegregate schools. We study a school choice mechanism employed in Berlin where a lottery quota is embedded in the immediate acceptance (IA) mechanism, and compare it to the deferred acceptance mechanism (DA) with a lottery quota. In both mechanisms, some seats are allocated based on academic achievement (e.g., grades), while seats in the lottery quota are allocated randomly. We find that, in theory, a lottery quota strengthens truth-telling in DA by eliminating non-truth-telling equilibria. Furthermore, the equilibrium outcome is stable for DA with a lottery but not for IA with a lottery. These predictions are borne out in the experiment. Moreover, the lottery quota leads to more diverse school populations in the experiment, as predicted. Students with the lowest grades profit more from the introduction of the lottery under IA than under DA.

Keywords: School choice; Immediate acceptance mechanism; Deferred acceptance mechanism; Lotteries; Experiment; Market design (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 C91 D47 D82 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0899825621000671
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: How Lotteries in School Choice Help to Level the Playing Field (2021)
Working Paper: How Lotteries in School Choice Help to Level the Playing Field (2019)
Working Paper: How Lotteries in School Choice Help to Level the Playing Field (2018)
Working Paper: How Lotteries in School Choice Help to Level the Playing Field (2018)
Working Paper: How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field (2018)
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:gamebe:v:129:y:2021:i:c:p:198-237

DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2021.05.010

Access Statistics for this article

Games and Economic Behavior is currently edited by E. Kalai

More articles in Games and Economic Behavior from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().