Operationalizing Pseudo-Market Mechanisms: School Choice and Shared Office Allocation

市场设计方法越来越多地用于学校选择等重要应用。大多数现有的方法要求参与者按顺序排列他们的选择。与此相反，本项目研究的是一类方法，它为每个备选方案计算数值分数。这样的偏好强度提供了更多的信息，而不仅仅是对项目的排序，因此在这个项目中开发的方法可以产生更好的分配稀缺项目。例如，通过征求学生在数量上的偏好，可以更有效地安排学生入学，也可以允许学校选择的优先次序。此外，当代理关心其他代理如何分配时，可以使用本项目中开发的分配方法。这种具有同伴效应的分配在大学宿舍或共用办公室中也有重要的应用。在这个项目中，提交的偏好强度被用来在计算机上操作一个伪市场，而不使用真实的货币。伪市场竞争均衡的计算方法在实践中应用较少，还有许多问题需要克服。该项目研究伪市场机制的理论，计算，实验室实验，现场测试和结构实证工作，主要应用是学校选择和共享办公室的分配。研究人员开发了一种新的计算算法来计算伪市场的竞争均衡。考虑到均衡的多重性，均衡的选择被仔细地处理。实验室实验研究的关注，代理人可能有非预期效用的偏好，并可以操纵的机制，串通在群体中。各种研究方法相结合，以执行和评估学校选择的伪市场机制，学生在每所学校的优先事项，必须得到尊重。

Market design methods have been increasingly used in important applications like school choice. Most existing methods ask participants to rank their alternatives in order. In contrast, this project studies a class of methods that elicits numerical scores for each alternative. Such preference intensities provide more information than just the ordering over the items, and therefore the methods developed in this project can generate better assignments of the scarce items. By soliciting numerical preferences, the placement of students in schools, for example, can be more efficient, and priorities in school choice can be also allowed. In addition, the assignment methods developed in this project can be used when agents care about how other agents are assigned. Such allocations with peer effects also have important applications in college dormitories or shared offices. In this project, the submitted intensities of preferences are used to operate a pseudo-market on a computer, without using real money. Methods computing competitive equilibria to pseudo-markets have been used less in practice and many hurdles need to be overcome. This project studies theoretical, computational, lab experimental, field test and structural empirical work on pseudo-market mechanisms, with key applications being school choice and the allocation of shared offices. The investigators develop a new computational algorithm to compute a competitive equilibrium to a pseudo-market. Given the multiplicity of equilibria, equilibrium selection is carefully addressed. Lab experiments investigate the concerns that agents may have non-expected-utility preferences and can manipulate the mechanism by colluding in groups. A variety of research methodologies are combined to implement and evaluate pseudo-market mechanisms in school choice, where students have priorities at each school that must be respected.