Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation

Chen, Yan; He, Yinghua

doi:10.1007/s00199-021-01376-3

Cited by 11 publications

(9 citation statements)

References 46 publications

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“…As mentioned above, a number of recent works study matching markets with information acquisition, but generally consider variants of deferred acceptance without money. Works of this kind include He and Magnac (2020); Che and Tercieux (2019); Ashlagi et al (2020); Chen and He (2021);Fernandez et al (2021); Immorlica et al (2020); Hakimov et al (2021).…”

Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Welfare Matching Markets via Descending Price

Bowers¹,

Waggoner²

2022

Preprint

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We consider design of monetary mechanisms for two-sided matching. Mechanisms in the tradition of the deferred acceptance algorithm, even in variants incorporating money, tend to focus on the criterion of stability. Instead, in this work we seek a simple auction-inspired mechanism with social welfare guarantees. We consider a descending-price mechanism called the Marshallian Match, proposed (but not analyzed) by Waggoner and Weyl (2019). We show the Marshallian Match has constant price of anarchy when all values for potential matches are positive. This result extends to models with costs for acquiring information about one's values, and also to matching on hypergraphs. With possiblynegative valuations, which capture e.g. job markets, the problem becomes harder. We introduce notions of approximate stability and show that they have beneficial welfare implications. However, the main problem of proving constant factor welfare guarantees in "ex ante stable equilibrium" remains open.

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Section: Related Workmentioning

confidence: 99%

High Welfare Matching Markets via Descending Price

Bowers¹,

Waggoner²

2022

Preprint

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“…Our paper contributes to the recent literature on information acquisition in matching markets, which includes theoretical studies such as Bade (2015), Immorlica et al (2020), Yan and He (2022), and Artemov (2021), and experimental studies like Chen and He (2021) and Koh and Lim (2022).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Chen and He (2021, 2022) compare students' incentives to acquire information under the immediate acceptance mechanism and the student‐proposing deferred acceptance mechanism. In both mechanisms, students have to submit rank‐order lists upfront and do not receive information on their budget set.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In both mechanisms, students have to submit rank‐order lists upfront and do not receive information on their budget set. In their theoretical contribution, Yan and He (2022) show that only the immediate acceptance mechanism incentivizes students to learn their own cardinal and the other participants' preferences. In experiments, Chen and He (2021) find that, overall, the willingness‐to‐pay for information is too high across treatments, lowering aggregate welfare.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…In contrast, we compare direct and sequential serial dictatorship mechanisms and study the effects of cutoff provision with respect to information acquisition and student welfare. Also, Chen and He (2021, 2022) model information acquisition as a binary choice: acquiring zero or full information. We develop a sequential search model in which agents can choose various stopping points.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

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Costly information acquisition in centralized matching markets

Hakimov,

Kübler,

Pan

2023

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When applying to a university, students and their parents devote considerable time acquiring information about university programs in order to form preferences. We explore ways to reduce wasteful information acquisition, that is, to help students avoid acquiring information about out‐of‐reach schools or universities, using a market design approach. Focusing on markets where students are ranked by universities based on exam scores, we find that, both theoretically and experimentally, a sequential serial dictatorship mechanism leads to higher student welfare than a direct serial dictatorship mechanism. This is because the sequential mechanism informs students about which universities are willing to admit them, thereby directing their search. Our experiments also show that the sequential mechanism has behavioral advantages because subjects deviate from the optimal search strategy less frequently than under the direct mechanism. Furthermore, providing historical cutoff scores under the direct mechanism can increase student welfare, especially when the information costs are high, although the observed effect is weaker than that of a sequential mechanism.

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Financial aid and early admissions at selective need-blind colleges

Murra-Anton

2021

Econ Theory

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I study a college-admissions model with two need-blind colleges and heterogeneous students. In a game in which colleges can choose a financial aid policy and either binding, nonbinding, or no early admissions, a unique equilibrium outcome exists. In equilibrium-and consistent with data-the more prestigious and wealthier college is more selective, has a more generous financial aid policy, and offers nonbinding early admissions while the other college offers a binding program. Compared to the counterfactual in which only regular admissions are offered, early admissions make the more prestigious college worse off but make all students and the other college better off.

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Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation

Cited by 11 publications

References 46 publications

High Welfare Matching Markets via Descending Price

High Welfare Matching Markets via Descending Price

Costly information acquisition in centralized matching markets

Financial aid and early admissions at selective need-blind colleges

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