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Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp

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  • Atila Abdulkadiroglu
  • Yeon-Koo Che
  • Parag A. Pathak
  • Alvin E. Roth
  • Olivier Tercieux

Abstract

In 2012, New Orleans Recovery School District (RSD) became the first U.S. district to unify charter and traditional public school admissions in a single-offer assignment mechanism known as OneApp. The RSD also became the first district to use a mechanism based on Top Trading Cycles (TTC) in a real-life allocation problem. Since TTC was originally devised for settings in which agents have endowments, there is no formal rationale for TTC in school choice. In particular, TTC is a Pareto efficient and strategy-proof mechanism, but so are other mechanisms. We show that TTC is constrained-optimal in the following sense: TTC minimizes justified envy among all Pareto efficient and strategy-proof mechanisms when each school has one seat. When schools have more than one seat, there are multiple possible implementations of TTC. Data from New Orleans and Boston indicate that there is little difference across these versions of TTC, but significantly less justified envy compared to a serial dictatorship.

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  • Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Yeon-Koo Che & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth & Olivier Tercieux, 2017. "Minimizing Justified Envy in School Choice: The Design of New Orleans' OneApp," NBER Working Papers 23265, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:23265
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    2. Ha, Wei & Kang, Le & Song, Yang, 2020. "College matching mechanisms and matching stability: Evidence from a natural experiment in China," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 206-226.
    3. Grenet, Julien & He, YingHua & Kübler, Dorothea, 2022. "Preference Discovery in University Admissions: The Case for Dynamic Multioffer Mechanisms," EconStor Open Access Articles and Book Chapters, ZBW - Leibniz Information Centre for Economics, vol. 130(6), pages 1-1.
    4. Biró, Péter & Gudmundsson, Jens, 2021. "Complexity of finding Pareto-efficient allocations of highest welfare," European Journal of Operational Research, Elsevier, vol. 291(2), pages 614-628.
    5. Guillen, Pablo & Hakimov, Rustamdjan, 2018. "The effectiveness of top-down advice in strategy-proof mechanisms: A field experiment," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 101(C), pages 505-511.
    6. Jiao, Zhenhua & Shen, Ziyang, 2020. "On responsiveness of top trading cycles mechanism to priority-based affirmative action," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 186(C).
    7. Avinatan Hassidim & Assaf Romm & Ran I. Shorrer, 2021. "The Limits of Incentives in Economic Matching Procedures," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(2), pages 951-963, February.
    8. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Tommy Andersson, 2022. "School Choice," NBER Working Papers 29822, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    9. Grenet, Julien & He, Yinghua & Kübler, Dorothea, 2019. "Decentralizing centralized matching markets: Implications from early offers in university admissions," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2019-208, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    10. Duddy, Conal, 2017. "The structure of priority in the school choice problem," MPRA Paper 81057, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    11. Hafalir, Isa E. & Kojima, Fuhito & Yenmez, M. Bumin, 2022. "Interdistrict school choice: A theory of student assignment," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 201(C).
    12. Dur, Umut & Hammond, Robert G. & Kesten, Onur, 2021. "Sequential school choice: Theory and evidence from the field and lab," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    13. Nadja Stroh-Maraun, 2020. "Pareto Efficiency in Weighted School Choice Problems," Working Papers Dissertations 64, Paderborn University, Faculty of Business Administration and Economics.
    14. Yoan Hermstrüwer, 2019. "Transparency and Fairness in School Choice Mechanisms," Discussion Paper Series of the Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods 2019_11, Max Planck Institute for Research on Collective Goods.
    15. Guillen, Pablo & Kesten, Onur & Kiefer, Alexander & Melatos, Mark, 2020. "Evaluating Advice in a Matching Mechanism with Experienced Participants: An Experimental Study of University Applicant Behaviour in Australia," Working Papers 2020-13, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    16. Guillen, Pablo & Kesten, Onur & Kiefer, Alexander & Melatos, Mark, 2020. "A Field Evaluation of a Matching Mechanism: University Applicant Behaviour in Australia," Working Papers 2020-15, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    17. Lincove, Jane Arnold & Valant, Jon & Cowen, Joshua M., 2018. "You can't always get what you want: Capacity constraints in a choice-based school system," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 67(C), pages 94-109.
    18. Kesten, Onur & Kurino, Morimitsu, 2019. "Strategy-proof improvements upon deferred acceptance: A maximal domain for possibility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 120-143.

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    JEL classification:

    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • I20 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - General

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