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

市场设计方法越来越多地被用于学校选择等重要应用中。大多数现有的方法要求参与者按顺序对他们的备选方案进行排名。相比之下，这个项目研究了一类方法，这些方法可以为每种选择得出数字分数。这种偏好强度提供了更多的信息，而不仅仅是对物品的排序，因此本项目中开发的方法可以产生更好的稀缺物品分配。例如，通过征集数字偏好，学生在学校的安置可以更有效率，也可以允许优先选择学校。此外，当代理关心如何分配其他代理时，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享办公室也有重要应用。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，而不使用真正的货币。方法计算伪市场的竞争均衡在实践中使用较少，需要克服许多障碍。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，关键应用是学校选择和共享办公场所的分配。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。鉴于均衡的多样性，对均衡的选择进行了仔细的讨论。实验室实验调查了这样的担忧，即代理人可能具有非预期的效用偏好，并可以通过集体串通来操纵机制。结合各种研究方法来实施和评估学校选择中的伪市场机制，在这种机制下，学生在每所学校都有必须尊重的优先事项。

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.