Manipulability in Constrained School Choice

Abstract

In school choice problems, we provide an in-depth analysis of the manipulability of the constrained deferred acceptance (DA) and Boston (BOS) mechanisms. We characterize dominant strategies in both mechanisms and show that constrained DA is less manipulable than constrained BOS in the sense of Arribillaga and Mass ́o (2015). We argue that, from a manipulability perspective, tie-breakers should be revealed before preferences are reported.

Keywords: School choice, Dominant strategy, Undominated strategy, Manipulability, Stability, Tie-breaking, Boston mechanism, Deferred acceptance mechanism.

JEL Classification: C78, D47, D82, I 20