Centralized School choice with unequal outside options

Mohammad Akbarpour, Adam Kapor, Christopher Neilson, Winnie van Dijk and Seth Zimmerman

Journal of Public Economics, 2022, vol. 210, issue C

Abstract: We study how market design choices exacerbate or mitigate pre-existing inequalities among participants. We introduce outside options in a well-known school choice model, and show that students always prefer manipulable over strategy-proof mechanisms if and only if they have an outside option. We test for the proposed relationship between outside options and manipulability in a setting where we can identify students’ outside options and observe applications under two mechanisms. Consistent with theory, students with an outside option are more likely to list popular, highly-rated schools under the Boston mechanism, and this gap disappears after switching to a Deferred Acceptance mechanism.

Keywords: Matching; School Choice; Strategy-proof; Outside options (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D47 D82 I24 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2022
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

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Working Paper: Centralized School Choice with Unequal Outside Options (2020)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:eee:pubeco:v:210:y:2022:i:c:s0047272722000469

DOI: 10.1016/j.jpubeco.2022.104644

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