The Performance of School Assignment Mechanisms in Practice

We use a unique combination of register and survey data from Amsterdam to investigate the performance of school assignment mechanisms in practice. We find that deferred acceptance (DA) results in higher mean welfare than the adaptive Boston mechanism. This is due to students making strategic mistake...

Full description

Saved in:
Bibliographic Details
Published in:The Journal of political economy 2023-02, Vol.131 (2), p.388-455
Main Authors: De Haan, Monique, Gautier, Pieter A., Oosterbeek, Hessel, van der Klaauw, Bas
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Economic theory
Errors
Political economy
Welfare
Citations: Items that this one cites
Items that cite this one
Online Access:Get full text
Tags: Add Tag
No Tags, Be the first to tag this record!
Description
Summary:We use a unique combination of register and survey data from Amsterdam to investigate the performance of school assignment mechanisms in practice. We find that deferred acceptance (DA) results in higher mean welfare than the adaptive Boston mechanism. This is due to students making strategic mistakes. The welfare gain of a switch from actual Boston to DA is over 90% of the welfare difference between actual Boston and optimal (proxy) Boston. Disadvantaged and lower-ability students would benefit most from such a switch.
ISSN:0022-3808
1537-534X
DOI:10.1086/721230