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On two kinds of manipulation for school choice problems

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  • Onur Kesten

Abstract

Many school districts in the US. employ centralized clearing houses to assign students to public schools. An important potential threat against any school choice mechanism is the tendency of schools to circumvent the procedure via two kinds of strategic manipulation: manipulation via capacities and manipulation via pre-arranged matches. This paper studies the extent of the vulnerability of three prominent school choice mechanisms that have been adopted (or, considered for adoption) by some school districts in the US. We find that the highly debated Boston mechanism as well as the top trading cycles mechanism are immune to manipulation via capacities, unlike the student-optimal stable mechanism (SOSM). We show that SOSM is immune to manipulation via capacities if and only if the priority structure satisfies an acyclicity condition proposed by Ergin (Econometrica 70:2489–2497, 2002 ). On the other hand, we show that essentially no mechanism is immune to manipulation via pre-arranged matches. Copyright Springer-Verlag 2012

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  • Onur Kesten, 2012. "On two kinds of manipulation for school choice problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 51(3), pages 677-693, November.
    • Handle: RePEc:spr:joecth:v:51:y:2012:i:3:p:677-693
    DOI: 10.1007/s00199-011-0618-6
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    4. Christian Basteck & Marco Mantovani, 2023. "Aiding applicants: leveling the playing field within the immediate acceptance mechanism," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 27(1), pages 187-220, February.
    5. Mustafa Afacan, 2014. "Fictitious students creation incentives in school choice problems," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 56(3), pages 493-514, August.
    6. Afacan, Mustafa Og̃uz & Dur, Umut Mert, 2017. "When preference misreporting is Harm[less]ful?," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 16-24.
    7. Antonio Romero-Medina & Matteo Triossi, 2017. "(Group) Strategy-proofness and stability in many-to many marching markets," Documentos de Trabajo 332, Centro de Economía Aplicada, Universidad de Chile.
    8. Afacan, Mustafa Oǧuz, 2013. "Application fee manipulations in matching markets," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 49(6), pages 446-453.
    9. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Tommy Andersson, 2022. "School Choice," NBER Working Papers 29822, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Afacan, Mustafa Oǧuz, 2016. "Enrollment manipulations in school choice," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C), pages 119-125.
    11. Saraiva, Gustavo, 2021. "An improved bound to manipulation in large stable matches," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 55-77.
    12. Kojima, Fuhito, 2013. "Efficient resource allocation under multi-unit demand," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-14.
    13. Mustafa Og̃uz Afacan & Zeynel Harun Aliog̃ulları & Mehmet Barlo, 2017. "Sticky matching in school choice," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 64(3), pages 509-538, October.
    14. Han, Xiang, 2018. "Stable and efficient resource allocation under weak priorities," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 107(C), pages 1-20.
    15. Christian Haas & Margeret Hall, 2019. "Two-Sided Matching for mentor-mentee allocations—Algorithms and manipulation strategies," PLOS ONE, Public Library of Science, vol. 14(3), pages 1-27, March.
    16. Di Feng, 2023. "Endowments-swapping-proofness and Efficiency in Multiple-Type Housing Markets," Discussion Paper Series DP2023-14, Research Institute for Economics & Business Administration, Kobe University.
    17. Hagen, Martin, 2022. "Tradable immigration quotas revisited," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 208(C).
    18. António Neto, 2015. "The Portuguese high school match," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 35(3), pages 1765-1771.
    19. Christian Haas, 2021. "Two-Sided Matching with Indifferences: Using Heuristics to Improve Properties of Stable Matchings," Computational Economics, Springer;Society for Computational Economics, vol. 57(4), pages 1115-1148, April.
    20. Tommy Andersson & Lars Ehlers, 2020. "Assigning Refugees to Landlords in Sweden: Efficient, Stable, and Maximum Matchings," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 122(3), pages 937-965, July.
    21. Mehmet Ekmekci & M. Bumin Yenmez, "undated". "Integrating Schools for Centralized Admissions," GSIA Working Papers 2014-E20, Carnegie Mellon University, Tepper School of Business.
    22. Harless, Patrick, 2014. "A School Choice Compromise: Between Immediate and Deferred Acceptance," MPRA Paper 61417, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    23. Benjamin N. Roth & Ran I. Shorrer, 2021. "Making Marketplaces Safe: Dominant Individual Rationality and Applications to Market Design," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(6), pages 3694-3713, June.
    24. Fujinaka, Yuji & Wakayama, Takuma, 2018. "Endowments-swapping-proof house allocation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 111(C), pages 187-202.
    25. Thayer Morrill, 2015. "Two simple variations of top trading cycles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 60(1), pages 123-140, September.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    School choice; Student-optimal stable mechanism; Top trading cycles; Boston mechanism; Acyclicity; C71; C78; C79; D61; D71; D78;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

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