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Object Allocation via Immediate-Acceptance: Characterizations and an Affirmative Action Application

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  • Battal Dogan
  • Bettina Klaus

Abstract

Which mechanism to use to allocate school seats to students still remains a question of hot debate. Meanwhile, immediate acceptance mechanisms remain popular in many school districts. We formalize desirable properties of mechanisms when respecting the relative rank of a school among the students' preferences is crucial. We show that those properties, together with well-known desirable resource allocation properties, characterize immediate acceptance mechanisms. Moreover, we show that replacing one of the properties, consistency, with a weaker property, non-bossiness, leads to a characterization of a much larger class of mechanisms, which we call choice-based immediate acceptance mechanisms. It turns out that certain objectives that are not achievable with immediate acceptance mechanisms, such as affirmative action, can be achieved with a choice-based immediate acceptance mechanism.

Suggested Citation

  • Battal Dogan & Bettina Klaus, 2018. "Object Allocation via Immediate-Acceptance: Characterizations and an Affirmative Action Application," Cahiers de Recherches Economiques du Département d'économie 16.15, Université de Lausanne, Faculté des HEC, Département d’économie.
  • Handle: RePEc:lau:crdeep:16.15
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    Citations

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    Cited by:

    1. Basteck, Christian & Klaus, Bettina & Kübler, Dorothea, 2021. "How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 198-237.
    2. Bettina Klaus & Alexandru Nichifor, 2020. "Serial dictatorship mechanisms with reservation prices," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 70(3), pages 665-684, October.
    3. William Thomson, 2016. "Non-bossiness," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 47(3), pages 665-696, October.
    4. Ayoade, Nickesha & Pápai, Szilvia, 2023. "School choice with preference rank classes," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 317-341.
    5. Karakaya, Mehmet & Klaus, Bettina & Schlegel, Jan Christoph, 2019. "Top trading cycles, consistency, and acyclic priorities for house allocation with existing tenants," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 184(C).
    6. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Newton, Jonathan, 2020. "Evolution and Rawlsian social choice in matching," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 123(C), pages 68-80.
    7. Atila Abdulkadiroglu & Tommy Andersson, 2022. "School Choice," NBER Working Papers 29822, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    8. Battal Doğan & Serhat Doğan & Kemal Yıldız, 2021. "Lexicographic choice under variable capacity constraints," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 23(1), pages 172-196, February.
    9. Di Feng & Jacob Coreno, 2024. "Justified Fairness in House Allocation Problems: two Characterizations of Strategy-proof Mechanisms," Papers 2407.14101, arXiv.org.
    10. Battal Doğan & M. Bumin Yenmez, 2023. "When does an additional stage improve welfare in centralized assignment?," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 76(4), pages 1145-1173, November.
    11. Dur, Umut & Paiement, Scott, 2024. "A characterization of the top trading cycles mechanism for the school choice problem," Mathematical Social Sciences, Elsevier, vol. 129(C), pages 93-100.
    12. Rasoul Ramezanian & Mehdi Feizi, 2021. "Ex-post favoring ranks: a fairness notion for the random assignment problem," Review of Economic Design, Springer;Society for Economic Design, vol. 25(3), pages 157-176, September.
    13. Raghavan, Madhav, 2020. "Influence in private-goods allocation," Journal of Mathematical Economics, Elsevier, vol. 89(C), pages 14-28.
    14. Mehdi Feizi, 2023. "The object allocation problem with favoring upper ranks," International Journal of Economic Theory, The International Society for Economic Theory, vol. 19(2), pages 370-383, June.
    15. Afacan, Mustafa Oğuz & Dur, Umut Mert, 2017. "Incompatibility between stability and consistency," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 150(C), pages 135-137.

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    More about this item

    Keywords

    affirmative action; consistency; favoring-higher-ranks; immediate acceptance mechanism; non-bossiness; non-wastefulness; rank-respecting unavailable-type-invariance; resource-monotonicity.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • C71 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Cooperative Games
    • C78 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
    • D61 - Microeconomics - - Welfare Economics - - - Allocative Efficiency; Cost-Benefit Analysis
    • D71 - Microeconomics - - Analysis of Collective Decision-Making - - - Social Choice; Clubs; Committees; Associations

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