Course Bidding at Business Schools

38 Pages Posted: 1 Jan 2008 Last revised: 16 Oct 2008

See all articles by Tayfun Sonmez

Tayfun Sonmez

Boston College - Department of Economics

M. Utku Ünver

Boston College - Department of Economics

Date Written: December 30, 2007

Abstract

Mechanisms that rely on course bidding are widely used at Business Schools in order to allocate seats at oversubscribed courses. Bids play two key roles under these mechanisms to infer student preferences and to determine who have bigger claims on course seats. We show that these two roles may easily conflict and preferences induced from bids may significantly differ from the true preferences. Therefore these mechanisms which are promoted as market mechanisms do not necessarily yield market outcomes. We introduce a Pareto-dominant market mechanism that can be implemented by asking students for their preferences in addition to their bids over courses.

Keywords: Course Allocation, Matching, Market Design, Deferred Acceptance

JEL Classification: C71, C78, D71, D78

Suggested Citation

Sonmez, Tayfun Oguz and Ünver, M. Utku, Course Bidding at Business Schools (December 30, 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1079525 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1079525

Tayfun Oguz Sonmez

Boston College - Department of Economics ( email )

140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
United States

M. Utku Ünver (Contact Author)

Boston College - Department of Economics ( email )

140 Commonwealth Avenue
Chestnut Hill, MA 02467
United States

HOME PAGE: http://sites.bc.edu/utku-unver