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

近年来，一些学校系统利用各种计划为学生与学校牵线搭桥。在这些机制中，学生对他们想上的学校进行排名，然后通过一个程序将这些排名与学校的能力和给予某些学生的任何特殊优先考虑一起考虑沿着。所得到的匹配可能是好的或坏的，这取决于学生（或他们的父母）在匹配过程中的行为（即，他们使用的战略伪装）。 设计匹配机制以减轻（或消除）这种战略伪装的理论工作假设匹配过程发生一次，不会再次重复。 实际上，这不是学校匹配市场的运作方式。 相反，匹配过程在每个学年开始之前重复。前几年参加过的家长可能会把沿着建议传递给他们所知道的新来者，告诉他们如何在这些市场上表现。随着时间的推移，一群人将发展出关于如何行事的“传统智慧”。如果这种传统智慧引导人们采取最佳行为，那么比赛的结果很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，那么由此产生的分配可能是次优的。 在资助的研究中，PI将进行一系列实验，以检查代际建议和网络结构（谁与谁交谈）对匹配机制性能的影响。匹配市场发生在从学生到学校到实习生到医院的各种情况下。 许多人都有一个共同的特点，即市场在特定的时间间隔内重复出现，有关“如何玩”游戏的信息随着时间的推移而流传下来。 了解传统智慧的演变以及市场参与者之间的联系结构（例如，父母与谁交谈）影响匹配市场的结果对于设计具有期望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.