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Strategic schools under the Boston mechanism revisited

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  • Bó, Inácio
  • Heller, C.-Philipp

Abstract

We show that Ergin & Sönmez's (2006) results which show that for schools it is a dominant strategy to truthfully rank the students under the Boston mechanism, and that the Nash equilibrium outcomes in undominated strategies of the induced game are stable, rely crucially on two assumptions. First, (a) that schools need to be restricted to find all students acceptable, and (b) that students cannot observe the priorities set by the schools before submitting their preferences. We show that relaxing either assumption eliminates the strategy dominance, and that Nash equilibrium outcomes in undominated strategies for the simultaneous induced game in case (a) and subgame perfect Nash equilibria in case (b) may contain unstable matchings. We also show that when able to manipulate capacities, schools may only have an incentive to do so if students submit their preferences after observing the reported capacities.

Suggested Citation

  • Bó, Inácio & Heller, C.-Philipp, 2016. "Strategic schools under the Boston mechanism revisited," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2016-204, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    • Handle: RePEc:zbw:wzbmbh:spii2016204
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mechanism Design; Two-Sided Matching; Boston Mechanism; School Choice;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement
    • 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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