IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/jmi/articl/jmi-v10i1a5.html

A position assignment experiment among active duty United States Navy physicians

Author

Listed:
  • Richard Childers

    (University of California, San Diego, USA)

  • Alicea Mingo

    (Bureau of Medicine and Surgery, United States Navy, USA)

  • Joel Schofer

    (US Navy Medicine Readiness and Training Command Guam, Captain, Medical Corps, United States Navy)

  • Naomi Utgoff

    (United States Naval Academy, USA)

  • William Howard Beasley

    (University of Oklahoma Health Campus, USA)

Abstract

The United States Navy (USN) assigns personnel to jobs via assignments officers; placement guidance exists but the process is decentralized. Participant attitudes towards and limited experience with market design are possible impediments to its incorporation into the assignment process. We investigate the appetite for the use of the deferred acceptance during the assignment process. We implemented a pilot project incorporating deferred acceptance into 231 assignments of 174 USN physicians to 23 commands. Pre-intervention, we surveyed physicians to obtain baseline perceptions of the traditional assignment process; post-intervention we surveyed pilot project participants. Only 38.2% of pre-pilot survey respondents said they preferred assignment via deferred acceptance; in the post-pilot survey 78.7% of participating physicians and 87.8% of participating commands reported a desire to keep using deferred acceptance. Our study suggests that attitudes towards using market design in personnel assignment may improve with experience, facilitating broader acceptance of its usage in the future.

Suggested Citation

  • Richard Childers & Alicea Mingo & Joel Schofer & Naomi Utgoff & William Howard Beasley, 2025. "A position assignment experiment among active duty United States Navy physicians," The Journal of Mechanism and Institution Design, Society for the Promotion of Mechanism and Institution Design, University of York, vol. 10(1), pages 123-162, December.
    • Handle: RePEc:jmi:articl:jmi-v10i1a5
    DOI: 10.22574/jmid.2025.12.005
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.mechanism-design.org/arch/v010-1/p_05.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.22574/jmid.2025.12.005?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • M51 - Business Administration and Business Economics; Marketing; Accounting; Personnel Economics - - Personnel Economics - - - Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:jmi:articl:jmi-v10i1a5. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Paul Schweinzer (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/deyoruk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.