Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study

Haeringer, Guillaume; Calsamiglia, Caterina; Klijn, Flip

doi:10.2139/ssrn.1435263

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Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study

FEEM Working Paper No. 29.2009

34 Pages Posted: 3 Aug 2009

See all articles by Guillaume Haeringer

Flip Klijn

Autonomous University of Barcelona - Department of Economics and Economic History

Date Written: July 17, 2009

Abstract

The literature on school choice assumes that families can submit a preference list over all the schools they want to be assigned to. However, in many real-life instances families are only allowed to submit a list containing a limited number of schools. Subjects' incentives are drastically affected, as more individuals manipulate their preferentes. Including a safety school in the constrained list explains most manipulations. Competitiveness across schools plays an important role. Constraining choices increases segregation and affects the stability and efficiency of the final allocation. Remarkably, the constraint reduces significantly the proportion of subjects playing a dominated strategy.

Keywords: School Choice, Matching, Experiment, Gale-Shapley, Top Trading Cycles, Boston Mechanism, Efficiency, Stability, Truncation, Truthtelling, Safety School

JEL Classification: C72, C78, D78, I20

Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation

Haeringer, Guillaume and Calsamiglia, Caterina and Klijn, Flip, Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study (July 17, 2009). FEEM Working Paper No. 29.2009, Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=1435263 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.1435263