Revealed Preference Analysis of School Choice Models

Preferences for schools are important determinants of equitable access to high-quality education, effects of expanded choice on school improvement, and school choice mechanism design. Standard methods for estimating consumer preferences are not applicable in education markets because students do not...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Annual review of economics 2020-08, Vol.12 (1), p.471-501
Main Authors: Agarwal, Nikhil, Somaini, Paulo
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Access
empirical matching
JEL C18
JEL D47
JEL I21
market design
mechanism design
Methodological problems
Preferences
revealed preferences
School choice
school demand
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Summary:Preferences for schools are important determinants of equitable access to high-quality education, effects of expanded choice on school improvement, and school choice mechanism design. Standard methods for estimating consumer preferences are not applicable in education markets because students do not always get their first-choice school. This review describes recently developed methods for using rich data from a school choice mechanism to estimate student preferences. Our objectives are to present a unifying framework for these methods and to help applied researchers decide which techniques to use. After laying out methodological issues, we provide an overview of empirical results obtained using these models and discuss some open questions.
ISSN:1941-1383
1941-1391
DOI:10.1146/annurev-economics-082019-112339