Reforms Meet Fairness Concerns In School And College Admissions

Abstract

Recently, many matching systems around the world have been reformed. These reforms responded to objections that the matching mechanisms in use were unfair and manipulable. Surprisingly, the mechanisms remained unfair even after there forms: the new mechanisms may induce an out come with a blocking student who desires and deserves a school which she did not receive.

However,as we show in this paper, the reforms introduced matching mechanisms which are more fair compared to the counterfactuals. First, most of there forms introduced mechanisms that are more fair by stability: when ever the old mechanism does not have a blocking student, the new mechanism does not have a blocking student either. Second,some reforms introduced mechanisms that are more fair by counting: the old mechanism always has at least as many blocking students as the new mechanism.

These findings give a novel rationale to there forms and complement there cent literature showing that the same reforms have introduced less manipulable matching mechanisms.We furthers how that the fairness and manipulability of the mechanisms are strongly logically related.

Keywords: market design,school choice,college admission,fairness,stability

JEL Classification: C78,D47,D78,D82