Preference Formation and Peer Effects in University Admission: The Further Deferred Acceptance

大学录取中的偏好形成和同伴效应：进一步推迟录取

• 批准号: 264625991
• 负责人: Professorin Dr. Dorothea Kübler
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH (WZB)
• 依托单位国家: 德国
• 项目类别: Research Grants
• 财政年份: 2015
• 资助国家: 德国
• 起止时间: 2014-12-31 至 2017-12-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://gepris.dfg.de/gepris/projekt/264625991?language=en
• 关键词: Preference; Formation; Peer; Effects; University

Market design has been one of the most successful fields of economics in terms of how research has improved practices in real life. As a recognition, the 2012 Nobel Prize in Economics was awarded to Alvin Roth and Lloyd Shapley "for the theory of stable allocations and the practice of market design". However, many unresolved research questions and practical problems remain. This research aims to advance our understanding of market design for university admission by focusing on two open questions. First, it is typically assumed that students can form a preference ranking of all universities at no cost. Second, the literature mostly does not allow for externalities such as peer effects. Unfortunately, both assumptions are unlikely to be satisfied in real applications. For example, students usually choose from a large set of options about which they have limited information, and thus have difficulties to formulate a full preference ranking. Also, students may prefer to study close to where their friends are admitted to university.A new mechanism that was recently introduced in Germany addresses the problems that can arise when the standard assumptions do not hold. Our project investigates this mechanism which is a variant of the Deferred-Acceptance (DA) mechanism (Gale and Shapley, 1962). Due to its desirable theoretical properties such as stability and strategy-proofness, the DA has been at the very center of market design, and it has been adopted in numerous educational settings such as school choice in Boston, New York City, and Paris. In contrast to the DA, the German mechanism has two important features: First, students in the system "apply to" a set of universities and are only required to rank them after universities make first-round offers. Second, students may receive multiple first-round offers and can decide which one to keep. Compared with the DA, the ranking decision and the acceptance/rejection of first-round offers are further deferred. Hence, we call it the Further-Deferred-Acceptance (FDA) mechanism. We build a model to illustrate that the FDA dominates the DA in terms of student welfare if preference formation is costly and/or peer effects exist. Both ingredients of the model are non-standard in the literature. To empirically test these assumptions, we use survey, administrative, and experimental data. The performance of the FDA relative to the DA will also be evaluated quantitatively by counterfactual analyses, i.e. by simulating outcomes under both mechanisms based on estimated preferences.This project will investigate a market design solution when applicants are uncertain about their preferences and when preferences are affected by peers. Our project will provide evidence on the conditions under which the FDA dominates the DA, using both theory and data. Given the low cost of switching from the DA to the FDA, this can be an option in many real-life contexts.

就研究如何改善现实生活中的实践而言，市场设计一直是经济学最成功的领域之一。作为对阿尔文·罗斯和劳埃德·沙普利“稳定配置理论和市场设计实践”的表彰，2012 年诺贝尔经济学奖被授予。然而，仍然存在许多未解决的研究问题和实际问题。本研究旨在通过关注两个开放性问题来加深我们对大学录取市场设计的理解。首先，通常假设学生可以免费形成所有大学的偏好排名。其次，文献大多没有考虑到同伴效应等外部因素。不幸的是，这两个假设在实际应用中都不太可能得到满足。例如，学生通常从一大堆选项中进行选择，而他们对这些选项的信息有限，因此很难制定完整的偏好排名。此外，学生可能更喜欢在他们的朋友考入大学的地方附近学习。 德国最近引入的一种新机制解决了标准假设不成立时可能出现的问题。我们的项目研究了这种机制，它是延迟接受 (DA) 机制的变体（Gale 和 Shapley，1962）。由于其理想的理论特性（例如稳定性和策略验证性），DA 一直处于市场设计的核心，并且已被许多教育环境所采用，例如波士顿、纽约和巴黎的择校。与DA相比，德国的机制有两个重要特点：首先，系统内的学生“申请”一组大学，只有在大学发出第一轮录取通知后才需要对它们进行排名。其次，学生可能会收到多个第一轮录取通知书，并可以决定保留哪一个。与DA相比，排名决定和首轮录取通知书的接受/拒绝进一步推迟。因此，我们将其称为进一步延迟接受（FDA）机制。我们建立了一个模型来说明，如果偏好形成成本高昂且/或存在同伴效应，则 FDA 在学生福利方面主导 DA。该模型的两个要素在文献中都是非标准的。为了凭经验检验这些假设，我们使用调查、管理和实验数据。 FDA 相对于 DA 的表现也将通过反事实分析进行定量评估，即根据估计的偏好模拟两种机制下的结果。该项目将研究当申请人不确定自己的偏好以及偏好受到同行影响时的市场设计解决方案。我们的项目将使用理论和数据来提供 FDA 主导 DA 的条件的证据。鉴于从 DA 转换到 FDA 的成本较低，这在许多现实生活中都是一种选择。