IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/boc/bocoec/729.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

The 'Boston' School-Choice Mechanism

Author

Listed:
  • Fuhito Kojima

    (Stanford University)

  • M. Utku Ünver

    (Boston College)

Abstract

The Boston mechanism is a popular student-placement mechanism in school-choice programs around the world. We provide two characterizations of the Boston mechanism. We introduce a new axiom, respect of preference rankings. A mechanism is the Boston mechanism for some priority if and only if it respects preference rankings and satisfies consistency, resource monotonicity, and an auxiliary invariance property. In environments where each type of object has exactly one unit, as in house allocation, a characterization is given by respect of preference rankings, individual rationality, population monotonicity, and the auxiliary invariance property.

Suggested Citation

  • Fuhito Kojima & M. Utku Ünver, 2010. "The 'Boston' School-Choice Mechanism," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 729, Boston College Department of Economics, revised 08 Oct 2010.
    • Handle: RePEc:boc:bocoec:729
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://fmwww.bc.edu/EC-P/wp729.pdf
    File Function: main text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Pais, Joana & Pintér, Ágnes, 2008. "School choice and information: An experimental study on matching mechanisms," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 64(1), pages 303-328, September.
    2. Caterina Calsamiglia & Guillaume Haeringer & Flip Klijn, 2010. "Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(4), pages 1860-1874, September.
    3. Kojima, Fuhito & Manea, Mihai, 2010. "Incentives in the probabilistic serial mechanism," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(1), pages 106-123, January.
    4. Szilvia Papai, 2000. "Strategyproof Assignment by Hierarchical Exchange," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 68(6), pages 1403-1434, November.
    5. Roth,Alvin E. & Sotomayor,Marilda A. Oliveira, 1992. "Two-Sided Matching," Cambridge Books, Cambridge University Press, number 9780521437882.
    6. Lars Ehlers & Bettina Klaus, 2004. "Resource-monotonicity for house allocation problems," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 32(4), pages 545-560, August.
    7. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Tayfun Sönmez, 2003. "School Choice: A Mechanism Design Approach," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 729-747, June.
    8. Ergin, Haluk & Sonmez, Tayfun, 2006. "Games of school choice under the Boston mechanism," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 90(1-2), pages 215-237, January.
    9. Haluk I. Ergin, 2002. "Efficient Resource Allocation on the Basis of Priorities," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 70(6), pages 2489-2497, November.
    10. Haeringer, Guillaume & Klijn, Flip, 2009. "Constrained school choice," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 1921-1947, September.
    11. Pycia, Marek & Unver, Utku, 2017. "Incentive compatible allocation and exchange of discrete resources," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 12(1), January.
    12. Parag A. Pathak & Tayfun Sonmez, 2008. "Leveling the Playing Field: Sincere and Sophisticated Players in the Boston Mechanism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(4), pages 1636-1652, September.
    13. Lars Ehlers, 2008. "Truncation Strategies in Matching Markets," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 33(2), pages 327-335, May.
    14. Kesten, Onur & Unver, Utku, 2015. "A theory of school choice lotteries," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    15. Chen, Yan & Sonmez, Tayfun, 2006. "School choice: an experimental study," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 127(1), pages 202-231, March.
    16. Eric Maskin, 1999. "Nash Equilibrium and Welfare Optimality," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 66(1), pages 23-38.
    17. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth, 2009. "Strategy-Proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1954-1978, December.
    18. Clayton Featherstone & Muriel Niederle, 2008. "Ex Ante Efficiency in School Choice Mechanisms: An Experimental Investigation," NBER Working Papers 14618, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Thomson, William, 1983. "Problems of fair division and the Egalitarian solution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 31(2), pages 211-226, December.
    20. Lars Ehlers & Bettina Klaus, 2003. "Resource-Monotonicity for House Allocation," Working Papers 33, Barcelona School of Economics.
    21. Alvin Roth, 2008. "Deferred acceptance algorithms: history, theory, practice, and open questions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(3), pages 537-569, March.
    22. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sönmez, 2006. "Changing the Boston School Choice Mechanism," Levine's Bibliography 122247000000001022, UCLA Department of Economics.
    23. Aytek Erdil & Haluk Ergin, 2008. "What's the Matter with Tie-Breaking? Improving Efficiency in School Choice," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 98(3), pages 669-689, June.
    24. Atila Abdulkadiroğlu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth & Tayfun Sönmez, 2005. "The Boston Public School Match," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 95(2), pages 368-371, May.
    25. Tayfun Sönmez & M. Utku Ünver, 2009. "Matching, Allocation, and Exchange of Discrete Resources," Boston College Working Papers in Economics 717, Boston College Department of Economics.
    26. Balinski, Michel & Sonmez, Tayfun, 1999. "A Tale of Two Mechanisms: Student Placement," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 84(1), pages 73-94, January.
    27. Hylland, Aanund & Zeckhauser, Richard, 1979. "The Efficient Allocation of Individuals to Positions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(2), pages 293-314, April.
    28. ,, 2009. "Asymptotic ordinal inefficiency of random serial dictatorship," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 4(2), June.
    29. Ehlers, Lars & Erdil, Aytek, 2010. "Efficient assignment respecting priorities," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(3), pages 1269-1282, May.
    30. Roth, Alvin E, 1991. "A Natural Experiment in the Organization of Entry-Level Labor Markets: Regional Markets for New Physicians and Surgeons in the United Kingdom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 81(3), pages 415-440, June.
    31. Takamiya, Koji, 2001. "Coalition strategy-proofness and monotonicity in Shapley-Scarf housing markets," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 41(2), pages 201-213, March.
    32. Kesten, Onur, 2009. "Why do popular mechanisms lack efficiency in random environments?," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(5), pages 2209-2226, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Yajing Chen, 2013. "A new Pareto efficient school choice mechanism," Economics Bulletin, AccessEcon, vol. 33(1), pages 271-277.
    2. Nanyang Bu, 2014. "Characterizations of the sequential priority rules in the assignment of object types," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(3), pages 635-645, October.
    3. Thayer Morrill, 2013. "An alternative characterization of top trading cycles," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 54(1), pages 181-197, September.
    4. Chen, Yan & Onur, Kesten, 2013. "From Boston to Chinese parallel to deferred acceptance: Theory and experiments on a family of school choice mechanisms," Discussion Papers, Research Unit: Market Behavior SP II 2013-205, WZB Berlin Social Science Center.
    5. Troyan, Peter, 2012. "Comparing school choice mechanisms by interim and ex-ante welfare," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 75(2), pages 936-947.
    6. Chen, Yan & Kesten, Onur, 2019. "Chinese college admissions and school choice reforms: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 115(C), pages 83-100.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Fuhito Kojima & M. Ünver, 2014. "The “Boston” school-choice mechanism: an axiomatic approach," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 55(3), pages 515-544, April.
    2. Kesten, Onur & Unver, Utku, 2015. "A theory of school choice lotteries," Theoretical Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 10(2), May.
    3. Harless, Patrick, 2014. "A School Choice Compromise: Between Immediate and Deferred Acceptance," MPRA Paper 61417, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    4. Abdulkadiroglu, Atila & Andersson, Tommy, 2022. "School Choice," Working Papers 2022:4, Lund University, Department of Economics.
    5. Lars Ehlers & Bettina Klaus, 2012. "Strategy-Proofness Makes the Difference : Deferred-Acceptance with Responsive Priorities," Cahiers de recherche 15-2012, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    6. Hatfield, John William & Kojima, Fuhito & Narita, Yusuke, 2016. "Improving schools through school choice: A market design approach," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 186-211.
    7. Lars Ehlers & Bettina Klaus, 2014. "Strategy-Proofness Makes the Difference: Deferred-Acceptance with Responsive Priorities," Mathematics of Operations Research, INFORMS, vol. 39(4), pages 949-966, November.
    8. Kojima, Fuhito, 2013. "Efficient resource allocation under multi-unit demand," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 82(C), pages 1-14.
    9. Alvin Roth, 2008. "Deferred acceptance algorithms: history, theory, practice, and open questions," International Journal of Game Theory, Springer;Game Theory Society, vol. 36(3), pages 537-569, March.
    10. Min Zhu, 2013. "College Admissions in China : A Mechanism Design Perspective," Working Papers 1327, Groupe d'Analyse et de Théorie Economique Lyon St-Étienne (GATE Lyon St-Étienne), Université de Lyon.
    11. Zhu, Min, 2014. "College admissions in China: A mechanism design perspective," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 618-631.
    12. Kesten, Onur & Kurino, Morimitsu, 2019. "Strategy-proof improvements upon deferred acceptance: A maximal domain for possibility," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 117(C), pages 120-143.
    13. Wu, Binzhen & Zhong, Xiaohan, 2014. "Matching mechanisms and matching quality: Evidence from a top university in China," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 84(C), pages 196-215.
    14. Parag A. Pathak & Tayfun Sönmez, 2013. "School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(1), pages 80-106, February.
    15. Min Zhu, 2013. "College Admissions in China : A Mechanism Design Perspective," Working Papers halshs-00860931, HAL.
    16. Jaimie W. Lien & Jie Zheng & Xiaohan Zhong, 2016. "Preference submission timing in school choice matching: testing fairness and efficiency in the laboratory," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 19(1), pages 116-150, March.
    17. Wu, Binzhen & Zhong, Xiaohan, 2020. "Matching inequality and strategic behavior under the Boston mechanism: Evidence from China's college admissions," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 1-21.
    18. José Alcalde & Antonio Romero-Medina, 2017. "Fair student placement," Theory and Decision, Springer, vol. 83(2), pages 293-307, August.
    19. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Parag A. Pathak & Alvin E. Roth, 2009. "Strategy-Proofness versus Efficiency in Matching with Indifferences: Redesigning the NYC High School Match," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 99(5), pages 1954-1978, December.
    20. Featherstone, Clayton R. & Niederle, Muriel, 2016. "Boston versus deferred acceptance in an interim setting: An experimental investigation," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 100(C), pages 353-375.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Mechanism design; matching; school choice; market design; Boston mechanism;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D78 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Positive Analysis of Policy Formulation and Implementation

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:boc:bocoec:729. 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.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with 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: Christopher F Baum (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/debocus.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.