College matching mechanisms and matching stability: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

Wei Ha, Le Kang and Yang Song

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, 2020, vol. 175, issue C, 206-226

Abstract: Matching mechanisms play a crucial role in the college admissions process, which in turn influence education and labor market outcomes. We exploit geographical and temporal variation in Chinese college admissions reform to provide new empirical evidence on how matching mechanisms affect matching stability. Consistent with theoretical findings by Chen and Kesten (2017), we show that in changing from the Immediate Acceptance (IA) mechanism to the Chinese parallel mechanism, a hybrid of IA and the Deferred Acceptance mechanisms, matching stability improved, as proxied by the level of stratification precision. This effect is stronger for provinces with wider first parallel choice bands in a nonlinear way.

Keywords: College admissions; School choice; Matching mechanism; Matching stability; Immediate Acceptance mechanism; Chinese parallel mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C78 D61 I23 I28 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2020
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0167268120301475
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:jeborg:v:175:y:2020:i:c:p:206-226

DOI: 10.1016/j.jebo.2020.05.002

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization is currently edited by Houser, D. and Puzzello, D.

More articles in Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization from Elsevier
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Catherine Liu ().