Assignment mechanisms: Common preferences and information acquisition

Georgy Artemov

Journal of Economic Theory, 2021, vol. 198, issue C

Abstract: I study costly information acquisition in a two-sided matching problem, such as matching applicants to schools. An applicant's utility is a sum of common and idiosyncratic components. The idiosyncratic component is unknown to the applicant but can be learned at a cost. As applicants learn, their preferences over schools become more heterogeneous, improving match quality. In my stylized environment, too few applicants acquire information in an ordinal strategy-proof mechanism. Subsidies, disclosure of applicants' priorities, and affirmative action-like policies lead to higher information acquisition and Pareto improvements. Learning may also decrease when an ordinal strategy-proof mechanism replaces an Immediate Acceptance mechanism.

Keywords: School choice; Information acquisition; Deferred Acceptance; Immediate Acceptance (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D47 D82 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0022053121001873
Full text for ScienceDirect subscribers only

Related works:
Working Paper: Assignment mechanisms: common preferences and information acquisition (2021)
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:jetheo:v:198:y:2021:i:c:s0022053121001873

DOI: 10.1016/j.jet.2021.105370

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Economic Theory is currently edited by A. Lizzeri and K. Shell

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