IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/esx/essedp/17510.html

No One Likes to Be Second Choice

Author

Listed:
  • Antler, Y

Abstract

A decision maker is interested in appointing one individual from a group of candidates to a public position with an exogenous wage. He must decide in what order to approach them. Candidates who are more valuable to the decision maker are less likely to be available. The candidates' preferences have a social component: each candidate finds the position more attractive if he is highly ranked by the decision maker (relative to the other candidates). However, the decision maker's preferences are his private information. As a result, candidates infer the decision maker's evaluation of them based on the number of candidates who have previously turned him down. The main result is that when the number of candidates is suficiently large, all of the candidates reject the decision maker's offers, including those whom he most values. Moreover, the decision maker's payoff is not monotonic in the number of candidates.

Suggested Citation

  • Antler, Y, 2016. "No One Likes to Be Second Choice," Economics Discussion Papers 17510, University of Essex, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:esx:essedp:17510
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://repository.essex.ac.uk/17510/
    File Function: original version
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Christopher Avery & Jonathan Levin, 2010. "Early Admissions at Selective Colleges," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(5), pages 2125-2156, December.
    2. Gul, Faruk & Pesendorfer, Wolfgang, 2016. "Interdependent preference models as a theory of intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 165(C), pages 179-208.
    3. Yair Antler, 2015. "Two-Sided Matching with Endogenous Preferences," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 7(3), pages 241-258, August.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Vincent Iehlé, 2016. "Gradual College Admisssion," Post-Print halshs-02367006, HAL.
    2. Haeringer, Guillaume & Iehlé, Vincent, 2021. "Gradual college admission," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 198(C).
    3. Timm Opitz & Christoph Schwaiger, 2023. "Reciprocal Preferences in Matching Markets," Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series 388, CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition.
    4. Wouter Dessein & Alex Frankel & Navin Kartik, 2025. "Test-Optional Admissions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 115(9), pages 3130-3170, September.
    5. Mustafa Afacan, 2013. "The welfare effects of pre-arrangements in matching markets," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 53(1), pages 139-151, May.
    6. Weng, Weiwei & Yang, Fanzheng, 2025. "Admission quota schemes and regional inequality," Journal of Behavioral and Experimental Economics (formerly The Journal of Socio-Economics), Elsevier, vol. 115(C).
    7. Alvin E. Roth, 2012. "Marketplace Institutions Related to the Timing of Transactions: Reply to Priest," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 30(2), pages 479-494.
    8. Heather Antecol & Janet Kiholm Smith, 2012. "The Early Decision Option in College Admission and Its Impact on Student Diversity," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 55(1), pages 217-249.
    9. Utgoff, Naomi M., 2025. "Information-based discrimination," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 20-30.
    10. Van Kolpin & Mark Stater, 2013. "The Real Deal? Information Asymmetries and Tuition Discounting in Higher Education," Review of Economic Analysis, Digital Initiatives at the University of Waterloo Library, vol. 5(2), pages 190-212, December.
    11. Bierbrauer, Felix & Netzer, Nick, 2016. "Mechanism design and intentions," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 163(C), pages 557-603.
    12. Pikulina, Elena S. & Tergiman, Chloe, 2020. "Preferences for power," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 185(C).
    13. Polipciuc, Maria, 2022. "Group identity and betrayal: decomposing trust," Research Memorandum 005, Maastricht University, Graduate School of Business and Economics (GSBE).
    14. Vincent Meisner & Jonas von Wangenheim, 2022. "Loss aversion in strategy-proof school-choice mechanisms," Papers 2207.14666, arXiv.org.
    15. Chen, Wei-Cheng & Chen, Yi-Yi & Kao, Yi-Cheng, 2018. "Limited choice in college admissions: An experimental study," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 108(C), pages 295-316.
    16. Bai, Chong-en & Chi, Wei & Qian, Xiaoye, 2014. "Do college entrance examination scores predict undergraduate GPAs? A tale of two universities," China Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 632-647.
    17. Somouaoga BONKOUNGOU, 2016. "Pareto Dominance of Deferred Acceptance through Early Decision," Cahiers de recherche 11-2016, Centre interuniversitaire de recherche en économie quantitative, CIREQ.
    18. Chao Fu, 2012. "Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions and Enrollment in the College Market," Working Papers 2012-002, Human Capital and Economic Opportunity Working Group.
    19. Miettinen, Topi & Kosfeld, Michael & Fehr, Ernst & Weibull, Jörgen, 2020. "Revealed preferences in a sequential prisoners’ dilemma: A horse-race between six utility functions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 173(C), pages 1-25.
    20. Chao Fu, 2014. "Equilibrium Tuition, Applications, Admissions, and Enrollment in the College Market," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 122(2), pages 225-281.

    More about this item

    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:esx:essedp:17510. 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: Essex Economics Web Manager The email address of this maintainer does not seem to be valid anymore. Please ask Essex Economics Web Manager to update the entry or send us the correct address (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edessuk.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.