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What you don't know can help you in school assignment

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  • Dur, Umut Mert
  • Morrill, Thayer

Abstract

No strategy-proof mechanism Pareto dominates the student-proposing Deferred Acceptance mechanism (hereafter DA). However, it is unknown if a mechanism can Pareto dominate DA in equilibrium. We demonstrate a surprising result: a market designer can do better by learning less about students' preferences when making a school assignment. Specifically, we demonstrate that running DA but limiting students to only two applications always has an equilibrium (in weakly undominated, pure strategies) that Pareto dominates DA. We also show that no mechanism that Pareto improves DA with respect to submitted preferences actually Pareto improves DA in equilibrium. Therefore, such a mechanism may not improve DA in practice.

Suggested Citation

  • Dur, Umut Mert & Morrill, Thayer, 2020. "What you don't know can help you in school assignment," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 120(C), pages 246-256.
    • Handle: RePEc:eee:gamebe:v:120:y:2020:i:c:p:246-256
    DOI: 10.1016/j.geb.2018.10.014
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    References listed on IDEAS

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    Cited by:

    1. Decerf, Benoit & Van der Linden, Martin, 2021. "Manipulability in school choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 197(C).
    2. Weng, Weiwei & Yang, Fanzheng, 2025. "Admission quota schemes and regional inequality," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    3. Jorge Alcalde-Unzu & Flip Klijn & Marc Vorsatz, 2023. "Constrained school choice: an experimental QRE analysis," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 61(3), pages 587-624, October.
    4. Jaramillo, Paula & Kayı, Çaǧatay & Klijn, Flip, 2021. "School choice: Nash implementation of stable matchings through rank-priority mechanisms," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 95(C).

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