Less is more: A Field Experiment on Matching

Pablo Guillen and Rustamdjan Hakimov

No 2015-16, Working Papers from University of Sydney, School of Economics

Abstract: We run a field experiment to test the truth-telling rates of the theoretically strategy-proof Top Trading Cycles mechanism (TTC) under different information conditions. First, we asked first-year economics students enrolled in an introductory microeconomics unit about which topic, among three, they would most like to write an essay about. Most students chose the same favorite topic. Then we used TTC to distribute students equally across the three options. We ran three treatments varying the information the students received about the mechanism. In the first treatment students were given a description of the matching mechanism. In the second they received a description of the strategy-proofness of the mechanism without details of the mechanism. Finally, in the third they were given both pieces of information. We find a significant and positive effect of describing the strategy-proofness on truth-telling rates. ON the other hand, describing the matching mechanism has a significant and negative effect on truth-telling rates.

Date: 2015-07
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-cbe, nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://econ-wpseries.com/2015/201516.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:syd:wpaper:2015-16

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Working Papers from University of Sydney, School of Economics Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Vanessa Holcombe ().