IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/cpr/ceprdp/16544.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Do Peer Preferences Matter in School Choice Market Design? Theory and Evidence

Author

Listed:
  • Cox, Natalie
  • Fonseca, Ricardo
  • Pakzad-Hurson, Bobby

Abstract

Can a centralized school choice clearinghouse generate a stable matching if it does not allow students to express their preferences over both programs and peers? Theoretically, we show that a stable matching exists with peer preferences under mild conditions, but finding one via canonical mechanisms is unlikely. We show that increasing transparency about the previous cohort of students enrolling at each program induces a tâtonnement process wherein the distributions of former student types play the role of prices. We theoretically model this process and develop a test for match stability. We implement this test empirically in the college admissions market in New SouthWales (NSW), Australia, where we find evidence of preferences over relative peer ability. We show that the NSW market fails to converge to stability over time. We propose a new mechanism that improves upon the current design, and we show that this mechanism generates a stable matching in the NSW market.

Suggested Citation

  • Cox, Natalie & Fonseca, Ricardo & Pakzad-Hurson, Bobby, 2022. "Do Peer Preferences Matter in School Choice Market Design? Theory and Evidence," CEPR Discussion Papers 16544, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    • Handle: RePEc:cpr:ceprdp:16544
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://cepr.org/publications/DP16544
    Download Restriction: CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Market design; College admissions; Peer preferences;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • D47 - Microeconomics - - Market Structure, Pricing, and Design - - - Market Design
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory

    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:cpr:ceprdp:16544. 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://www.cepr.org .

    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.