School Matching, Mechanism Design, Networks and Advice: An Experimental/Field Study

近年来，许多学校系统采用了各种方案来匹配学生和学校。在这些机制中，学生对他们想上的学校进行排名，然后通过一个过程将这些排名与学校的能力以及授予某些学生的任何特殊优先事项一并考虑在内。结果的匹配可能是好的，也可能是坏的，这取决于学生（或他们的父母）在匹配过程中的行为（即，他们使用的策略掩饰）。设计匹配机制以减轻（或消除）这种战略性掩饰的理论工作假设匹配过程只发生一次，不会再次重复。作为一个实际问题，这不是学校匹配市场的运作方式。相反，匹配过程在每学年开始前重复进行。前几年参加过的父母可能会向他们知道如何在这些市场中表现的新人传递建议。随着时间的推移，一群人会发展出“传统智慧”，知道如何行事。如果这种传统智慧能引导人们做出最佳行为，那么匹配的结果就可能与机制设计者的意图一致。然而，如果传统智慧强化了不良行为，那么最终的分配可能不是最优的。在资助的研究中，PI将进行一系列实验，以检验代际建议和网络结构（谁与谁交谈）对匹配机制性能的影响。从学生到学校，从实习生到医院，匹配市场的情况多种多样。许多游戏都有这样的特点，即市场会在特定的时间间隔内重新出现，而关于“如何玩”游戏的信息也会随着时间的推移而流传下来。了解由此产生的传统智慧的演变以及市场参与者之间的联系结构（例如，哪些父母与谁交谈）如何影响匹配市场的结果，对于设计具有理想属性的匹配机制至关重要。

In recent years a number of school systems have used various schemes to match students with schools. In these mechanisms students rank the schools they would like to attend and then are placed into schools by a process that takes these rankings into account along with the capacities of the schools and any special priorities granted to some students. The resulting matches may be good or bad depending on the behavior of the students (or their parents) in the matching process (i.e., the strategic dissembling they employ.) Theoretical work done to design matching mechanisms that mitigate (or eliminate) such strategic dissembling assumes the matching process occurs once and is not repeated again. As a practical matter, this isn't how school matching markets work. Instead, the matching process is repeated prior to the beginning of each school year. Parents who have participated in prior years may pass along advice to newcomers they know regarding how to behave in these markets. Over time groups of people will develop "traditional wisdom" as to how to behave. If this traditional wisdom leads people to behave optimally then the outcome of the match is likely to be consistent with the intentions of the mechanism designers. If, however, the traditional wisdom reinforces bad behavior, the resulting allocations may be sub-optimal. In the funded research the PI will conduct a series of experiments to examine the impact of intergenerational advice and network structure (who talks with who) on the performance of matching mechanisms.Matching markets occur is a variety of situations from matching students to schools to interns to hospitals. Many share the feature that the market reoccurs at specific intervals with information on "how to play" the game being passed down over time. Understanding how the resulting evolution of traditional wisdom and how the structure of connections among market participants (e.g., which parents talk to who) influences the outcome of matching market is crucial to designing matching mechanisms with desirable properties.