Boston versus deferred acceptance in an interim setting: An experimental investigation

doi:10.1016/J.GEB.2016.10.005

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Boston versus deferred acceptance in an interim setting: An experimental investigation

Journal Article•DOI•

Boston versus deferred acceptance in an interim setting: An experimental investigation

Clayton R. Featherstone¹, Muriel Niederle²•Institutions (2)

University of Pennsylvania¹, Stanford University²

01 Nov 2016-Games and Economic Behavior (Academic Press)-Vol. 100, pp 353-375

TL;DR: This work shows that even in simple environments with ample feedback and repetition, agents fail to reach non-truthtelling equilibria, and offers another way forward: implementing truth-telling as an ordinal Bayes–Nash equilibrium rather than as a dominant strategy equilibrium, showing that this weaker solution concept can allow for more efficient mechanisms in theory and in practice.

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About: This article is published in Games and Economic Behavior.The article was published on 2016-11-01. It has received 64 citations till now. The article focuses on the topics: Equilibrium selection & Solution concept.

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Journal Article•DOI•

Suboptimal behavior in strategy-proof mechanisms: Evidence from the residency match

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Alex Rees-Jones¹•Institutions (1)

University of Pennsylvania¹

08 May 2017-Games and Economic Behavior

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the causes and correlates of students' futile attempts at strategic misrepresentation and demonstrate broad challenges in mechanism design, and present evidence that some students pursue futile attempts to game the system.

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58 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

An experimental investigation of preference misrepresentation in the residency match.

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Alex Rees-Jones¹, Samuel Skowronek¹•Institutions (1)

University of Pennsylvania¹

23 Oct 2018-Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences of the United States of America

TL;DR: This article found that 23% of participants misrepresent their preferences when placed in an analogous, incentivized matching task and explored the factors that predict preference misrepresentation, including cognitive ability, strategic positioning, overconfidence, expectations, advice, and trust.

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Abstract: The development and deployment of matching procedures that incentivize truthful preference reporting is considered one of the major successes of market design research. In this study, we test the degree to which these procedures succeed in eliminating preference misrepresentation. We administered an online experiment to 1,714 medical students immediately after their participation in the medical residency match—a leading field application of strategy-proof market design. When placed in an analogous, incentivized matching task, we find that 23% of participants misrepresent their preferences. We explore the factors that predict preference misrepresentation, including cognitive ability, strategic positioning, overconfidence, expectations, advice, and trust. We discuss the implications of this behavior for the design of allocation mechanisms and the social welfare in markets that use them.

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53 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Chinese college admissions and school choice reforms: An experimental study

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Yan Chen¹, Yan Chen², Onur Kesten³•Institutions (3)

Tsinghua University¹, University of Michigan², Carnegie Mellon University³

01 May 2019-Games and Economic Behavior

TL;DR: It is found that participants are most likely to reveal their preferences truthfully under DA, followed by PA and then DA, and stability comparisons also follow the same order, although efficiency comparisons vary across environments.

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45 citations

Journal Article•DOI•

Obvious Mistakes in a Strategically Simple College Admissions Environment

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Ran I. Shorrer¹, Sándor Sóvágó²•Institutions (2)

Pennsylvania State University¹, VU University Amsterdam²

06 Nov 2017-Social Science Research Network

TL;DR: Using administrative data from Hungary, it is shown that many college applicants forgo the free opportunity to receive a tuition waiver, and causal evidence that applicants make more such mistakes when applying to programs where tuition waivers are more selective.

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Abstract: Although many centralized school assignment systems use strategically simple mechanisms, applicants often make dominated choices. Using administrative data from Hungary, we show that many college applicants forgo the free opportunity to receive a tuition waiver. Using two empirical strategies, we provide causal evidence that applicants make more such mistakes when applying to programs where tuition waivers are more selective. First, exploiting a reform that increased the selectivity of admission with a tuition waiver in some programs, we find that the rate of mistakes quadrupled. Second, we show that applicants that apply to multiple programs are more likely to make mistakes in their applications to more selective programs. A non-negligible share of these mistakes are consequential, costing applicants more than 3,000 dollars on average. Costly mistakes transfer tuition waivers from high– to low-socioeconomic status students, and increase the number of students admitted to college. Our results suggest that mistakes are more common when their expected utility cost is lower.

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37 citations

Cites background from "Boston versus deferred acceptance i..."

...4 In the field, Gross et al. (2015), Chen and Pereyra (2017), and Rees-Jones (2017b) document dominated-strategy play in strategically simple high-stakes environments using survey evidence. Relying exclusively on observational data, Hassidim et al. (2016) detect obvious mistakes in the Israeli Psychology Master’s Match (IPMM) and Artemov et al....
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...4 In the field, Gross et al. (2015), Chen and Pereyra (2017), and Rees-Jones (2017b) document dominated-strategy play in strategically simple high-stakes environments using survey evidence....
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Journal Article•DOI•

Experiments on centralized school choice and college admissions: a survey

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Rustamdjan Hakimov¹, Dorothea Kübler²•Institutions (2)

University of Lausanne¹, Technical University of Berlin²

01 Jun 2021-Experimental Economics

TL;DR: In this paper, the authors survey the experimental literature on centralized matching markets, covering school choice and college admissions models, and discuss the optimality of participants' strategies, learning by applicants and their behavioral biases, as well as the role of communication, information, and advice.

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Abstract: The paper surveys the experimental literature on centralized matching markets, covering school choice and college admissions models. In the school choice model, one side of the market (schools) is not strategic, and rules (priorities) guide the acceptance decisions. The model covers applications such as school choice programs, centralized university admissions in many countries, and the centralized assignment of teachers to schools. In the college admissions model, both sides of the market are strategic. It applies to college and university admissions in countries where universities can select students, and centralized labor markets such as the assignment of doctors to hospitals. The survey discusses, among other things, the comparison of various centralized mechanisms, the optimality of participants’ strategies, learning by applicants and their behavioral biases, as well as the role of communication, information, and advice. The main experimental findings considered in the survey concern truth-telling and strategic manipulations by the agents, as well as the stability and efficiency of the matching outcome.

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34 citations

Cites background from "Boston versus deferred acceptance i..."

...Featherstone and Niederle (2016) run experiments comparing DA and BOS in two different environments....
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...Despite the fact that in theory BOS can improve on DA with respect to efficiency, the prediction typically fails in experiments due to the low percentage of equilibrium outcomes reached under BOS (see, for instance, Featherstone and Niederle 2016)....
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References

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Abstract: z-Tree (Zurich Toolbox for Ready-made Economic Experiments) is a software for developing and conducting economic experiments. The software is stable and allows programming almost any kind of experiments in a short time. In this article, I present the guiding principles behind the software design, its features, and its limitations.

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"Boston versus deferred acceptance i..." refers methods in this paper

...The experiment was conducted on computers, using z-Tree (Fischbacher, 2007)....
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Journal Article•DOI•

College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage

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David Gale¹, Lloyd S. Shapley¹•Institutions (1)

RAND Corporation¹

01 Jan 1962-American Mathematical Monthly

TL;DR: In this article, the authors studied the relationship between college admission and the stability of marriage in the United States, and found that college admission is correlated with the number of stable marriages.

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Abstract: (2013). College Admissions and the Stability of Marriage. The American Mathematical Monthly: Vol. 120, No. 5, pp. 386-391.

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Handbook of Experimental Economics

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John H. Kagel, Alvin E. Roth

01 Jan 1995

TL;DR: A comprehensive survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics can be found in this article, with a focus on public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making.

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Abstract: This book, which comprises eight chapters, presents a comprehensive critical survey of the results and methods of laboratory experiments in economics. The first chapter provides an introduction to experimental economics as a whole, with the remaining chapters providing surveys by leading practitioners in areas of economics that have seen a concentration of experiments: public goods, coordination problems, bargaining, industrial organization, asset markets, auctions, and individual decision making.

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2,375 citations

"Boston versus deferred acceptance i..." refers background in this paper

...…Featherstone and Mayefsky, 2015 and Chen and Sönmez, 2006), and also some other strategy-proof mechanisms (see e.g. Chapter 8 in the Handbook of Experimental Economics, Kagel and Roth, 1995, on the failure of subjects to truth-tell in independent private values sealed bid second price auctions)....
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...To compare strategies between Boston and DA, first note that basically all submitted strategies rank all schools.44 The proportion of truth-telling strategies is 58% under Boston, compared with 66% under DA.45 This difference is not significant: a Mann–Whitney test across mechanisms, comparing mean truth-telling rates in each session, yields a p-value of 0.70 (n = 11).46 While truth-telling rates of about two-thirds seem low, they are comparable to the findings in other experiments using DA (see Featherstone and Mayefsky, 2015 and Chen and Sönmez, 2006), and also some other strategy-proof mechanisms (see e.g. Chapter 8 in the Handbook of Experimental Economics, Kagel and Roth, 1995, on the failure of subjects to truth-tell in independent private values sealed bid second price auctions)....
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...…for example, Featherstone and Mayefsky (2015), Fragiadakis and Troyan (2015), and the summary of work in auctions in the old experimental handbook (Kagel and Roth, 1995, Chapter 8), the new experimental handbook (Kagel and Roth, 2016, Chapter 10 by Kagel and Levin), and in Kagel and Levin’s book…...
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