Assigning more students to their top choices: A comparison of tie-breaking rules

Itai Ashlagi; Afshin Nikzad; Assaf Romm

doi:10.1016/j.geb.2019.02.015

Assigning more students to their top choices: A comparison of tie-breaking rules

Itai Ashlagi, Afshin Nikzad, Assaf Romm^*

^*Corresponding author for this work

Department of Economics

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

12 Scopus citations

Abstract

School districts that implement stable matchings face various decisions that affect students' assignments to schools. We study the properties of the rank distribution of students with random preferences when schools use different tie-breaking rules to rank equivalent students. Under a single tie-breaking rule, where all schools use the same ranking, a constant fraction of students are assigned to one of their top choices. In contrast, under a multiple tie-breaking rule, where each school independently ranks students, a vanishing fraction of students are matched with one of their top choices. However, if students are allowed to submit only relatively short preference lists under a multiple tie-breaking rule, a constant fraction of students will be matched with one of their top choices, while only a “small” fraction of students will remain unmatched.

Original language	American English
Pages (from-to)	167-187
Number of pages	21
Journal	Games and Economic Behavior
Volume	115
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.geb.2019.02.015
State	Published - May 2019

Bibliographical note

Funding Information:
We thank Sergiu Hart, Avinatan Hassidim, Déborah Marciano, Parag Pathak, and Alvin Roth for helpful discussions. We also thank the editors and two referees in GEB for very useful comments. Ashlagi acknowledges the research support of National Science Foundation grant SES-1254768. Romm acknowledges the research support of the Maurice Falk Institute, Israel Science Foundation grant 1780/16, and the United States-Israel Binational Science Foundation grant 2016015.

Publisher Copyright:
© 2019 Elsevier Inc.

Keywords

Deferred acceptance
School choice
Stable matching
Tie-breaking rule

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10.1016/j.geb.2019.02.015

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title = "Assigning more students to their top choices: A comparison of tie-breaking rules",

abstract = "School districts that implement stable matchings face various decisions that affect students' assignments to schools. We study the properties of the rank distribution of students with random preferences when schools use different tie-breaking rules to rank equivalent students. Under a single tie-breaking rule, where all schools use the same ranking, a constant fraction of students are assigned to one of their top choices. In contrast, under a multiple tie-breaking rule, where each school independently ranks students, a vanishing fraction of students are matched with one of their top choices. However, if students are allowed to submit only relatively short preference lists under a multiple tie-breaking rule, a constant fraction of students will be matched with one of their top choices, while only a “small” fraction of students will remain unmatched.",

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AB - School districts that implement stable matchings face various decisions that affect students' assignments to schools. We study the properties of the rank distribution of students with random preferences when schools use different tie-breaking rules to rank equivalent students. Under a single tie-breaking rule, where all schools use the same ranking, a constant fraction of students are assigned to one of their top choices. In contrast, under a multiple tie-breaking rule, where each school independently ranks students, a vanishing fraction of students are matched with one of their top choices. However, if students are allowed to submit only relatively short preference lists under a multiple tie-breaking rule, a constant fraction of students will be matched with one of their top choices, while only a “small” fraction of students will remain unmatched.

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JF - Games and Economic Behavior

ER -

Assigning more students to their top choices: A comparison of tie-breaking rules

Abstract

Bibliographical note

Keywords

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