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Comparing School Choice and College Admission Mechanisms By Their Immunity to Strategic Admissions

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  • Somouaoga Bonkoungou
  • Alexander S. Nesterov

Abstract

Recently dozens of school districts and college admissions systems around the world have reformed their admission rules. As a main motivation for these reforms the policymakers cited strategic flaws of the rules: students had strong incentives to game the system, which caused dramatic consequences for non-strategic students. However, almost none of the new rules were strategy-proof. We explain this puzzle. We show that after the reforms the rules became more immune to strategic admissions: each student received a smaller set of schools that he can get in using a strategy, weakening incentives to manipulate. Simultaneously, the admission to each school became strategy-proof to a larger set of students, making the schools more available for non-strategic students. We also show that the existing explanation of the puzzle due to Pathak and S\"onmez (2013) is incomplete.

Suggested Citation

  • Somouaoga Bonkoungou & Alexander S. Nesterov, 2020. "Comparing School Choice and College Admission Mechanisms By Their Immunity to Strategic Admissions," Papers 2001.06166, arXiv.org, revised Jan 2020.
    • Handle: RePEc:arx:papers:2001.06166
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Somouaoga Bonkoungou & Alexander Nesterov, 2020. "Reforms meet fairness concerns in school and college admissions," Papers 2009.05245, arXiv.org, revised Sep 2024.
    2. Afacan, Mustafa Oğuz & Evdokimov, Piotr & Hakimov, Rustamdjan & Turhan, Bertan, 2022. "Parallel markets in school choice," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 133(C), pages 181-201.
    3. Kondratev, Aleksei Y. & Nesterov, Alexander S., 2022. "Minimal envy and popular matchings," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 296(3), pages 776-787.

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    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation
    • D82 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Asymmetric and Private Information; Mechanism Design

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