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Structural Estimation of a Model of School Choices: the Boston Mechanism vs. Its Alternatives

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  • Chao Fu
  • Maia Güell
  • Caterina Calsamiglia

Abstract

An important debate centers on what procedure should be used to allocate students across public schools. We contribute to this debate by developing and estimating a model of school choices by households under one of the most popular procedures known as the Boston mechanism (BM). We recover the joint distribution of household preferences and sophistication types using administrative data from Barcelona. Our counterfactual policy analyses show that a change from BM to the Gale-Shapley student deferred acceptance mechanism would create more losers than winners, while a change from BM to the top trading cycles mechanism has the opposite effect.

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  • Chao Fu & Maia Güell & Caterina Calsamiglia, 2015. "Structural Estimation of a Model of School Choices: the Boston Mechanism vs. Its Alternatives," Working Papers 811, Barcelona School of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:bge:wpaper:811
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    More about this item

    Keywords

    school choice; Boston mechanism; priorities; Gale-Shapley mechanism; Top Trading Cycles mechanism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • D63 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Equity, Justice, Inequality, and Other Normative Criteria and Measurement

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