A Dynamic Matching Mechanism for College Admissions: Theory and Experiment

Binglin Gong () and Yingzhi Liang ()
Additional contact information
Binglin Gong: School of Economics and Management, KLATASDS-MOE, East China Normal University, Shanghai 200062, China; and Research Center for Common Prosperity, Future Regional Development Laboratory, Innovation Center of Yangtze River Delta, Zhejiang University, Jiaxing 314100, China
Yingzhi Liang: Naveen Jindal School of Management, University of Texas at Dallas, Richardson, Texas 75080

Management Science, 2025, vol. 71, issue 5, 4396-4412

Abstract: Market design provides managerial insights into the success and failure of various market institutions in allocating scarce resources. We investigate a dynamic matching mechanism used in real-world college admissions, where students share a common priority ranking. Theoretically, we prove that efficient and stable matching occurs with an arbitrarily high probability, assuming sufficient revision opportunities and rationality. This predicts that the dynamic mechanism is less stable than the deferred acceptance mechanism and less efficient than the Boston mechanism. We confirm this prediction in a low-complexity laboratory setting. However, in a high-complexity setting, the dynamic mechanism matches the stability of the deferred acceptance and the efficiency of the Boston mechanism, as both underperform in this setting. This finding indicates that the dynamic mechanism is more resilient to increased complexity. We attribute this resilience to its belief-independent characterization of rationalizable strategies. Beyond college admissions, the dynamic mechanism has potential applications in housing assignments, job allocations, and ascending auctions.

Keywords: dynamic matching; college admissions; school choice; deferred acceptance; Boston mechanism (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/mnsc.2022.00871 (application/pdf)

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:inm:ormnsc:v:71:y:2025:i:5:p:4396-4412

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Management Science from INFORMS Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Chris Asher ().