The Core of School Choice Problems

28 Pages Posted: 16 Apr 2020 Last revised: 1 Dec 2022

See all articles by Kang Rong

Kang Rong

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics

Qianfeng Tang

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics

Yongchao Zhang

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics

Date Written: April 2, 2020

Abstract

We propose a notion of core for school choice (i.e., priority-based allocation) problems. We say that a coalition of students is able to enforce a subassignment among them if, given their priorities at schools, other students together cannot exclude any student in the coalition from her assigned school. An assignment is in the core if no coalition of students can enforce any subassignment among them that Pareto improves their assignments. We show that the core is always nonempty and all assignments in it are Pareto efficient. When the student-proposing deferred acceptance mechanism is a Pareto efficient mechanism, it always produces the unique assignment in the core. We also propose a natural refinement of the core and show that it is equivalent to the concept of priority-efficiency proposed by Reny (2022).

Keywords: Core, Deferred acceptance algorithm, Pareto efficiency, school choice, stability, top trading cycles

JEL Classification: C78; D61; D78; I20

Suggested Citation

Rong, Kang and Tang, Qianfeng and Zhang, Yongchao, The Core of School Choice Problems (April 2, 2020). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3566231 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.3566231

Kang Rong

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics ( email )

777 Guoding Road
Shanghai, 200433
China

Qianfeng Tang (Contact Author)

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics ( email )

777 Guoding Road
Shanghai, 200433
China

Yongchao Zhang

Shanghai University of Finance and Economics - School of Economics ( email )

777 Guoding Road Yangpu D.
Shanghai, Shanghai 200433
China

HOME PAGE: http://zhangyongchao.weebly.com

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