IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/oup/qjecon/v137y2022i3p1791-1848..html

Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Felipe Arteaga
  • Adam J Kapor
  • Christopher A Neilson
  • Seth D Zimmerman

Abstract

Many school districts with centralized school choice adopt strategy-proof assignment mechanisms to relieve applicants from needing to strategize based on beliefs about their own admissions chances. This article shows that beliefs about admissions chances shape choice outcomes even when the assignment mechanism is strategy-proof by influencing how applicants search for schools and that “smart matching platforms” that provide live feedback on admissions chances help applicants search more effectively. Motivated by a model in which applicants engage in costly search for schools and overoptimism can lead to undersearch, we use data from a large-scale survey of choice participants in Chile to show that learning about schools is hard, beliefs about admissions chances guide the decision to stop searching, and applicants systematically underestimate nonplacement risk. We use RCT and RD research designs to evaluate scaled live feedback policies in the Chilean and New Haven choice systems. Twenty-two percent of applicants submitting applications where risks of nonplacement are high respond to warnings by adding schools to their lists, reducing nonplacement risk by 58% and increasing test score value added at the schools where they enroll by 0.10 standard deviations. Reducing the burden of school choice requires not just strategy-proofness inside the centralized system but also choice supports for the strategic decisions that inevitably remain outside of it.

Suggested Citation

  • Felipe Arteaga & Adam J Kapor & Christopher A Neilson & Seth D Zimmerman, 2022. "Smart Matching Platforms and Heterogeneous Beliefs in Centralized School Choice," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(3), pages 1791-1848.
    • Handle: RePEc:oup:qjecon:v:137:y:2022:i:3:p:1791-1848.
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/qje/qjac013
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to look for a different version below or

    for a different version of it.

    Other versions of this item:

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • D83 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Search; Learning; Information and Knowledge; Communication; Belief; Unawareness
    • H75 - Public Economics - - State and Local Government; Intergovernmental Relations - - - State and Local Government: Health, Education, and Welfare
    • I2 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education
    • J01 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - General - - - Labor Economics: General

    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:oup:qjecon:v:137:y:2022:i:3:p:1791-1848.. 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: Oxford University Press (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://academic.oup.com/qje .

    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.