Speaker: Bas van der Klaauw, VU University Amsterdam

Title: The performance of school assignment mechanisms in practice (joint with Monique de Haan, Pieter Gautier and Hessel Oosterbeek)

Abstract: We elicit students' cardinal preferences for secondary schools in Amsterdam and  estimate that under the Boston mechanism around 8% of the students do not apply to their most-preferred school. This percentage is larger for students with weak preferences for their most-preferred school. We  compare  allocations resulting from the Boston mechanism with strategy-proof Deferred-Acceptance mechanisms with single and multiple tie-breaking (DA-STB and DA-MTB).  DA-STB outperforms Boston by placing more students in their top-n  schools, for any n < 11. DA-STB also results in higher average welfare than Boston. We find a trade-off between DA-STB and DA-MTB. DA-STB places more students in their most-preferred school than DA-MTB, but fewer in their top-n, for n>1. Finally, students from disadvantaged backgrounds benefit most from a switch from Boston to any of the DA mechanisms.

Organizer: Emma von Essen