Deviation from Truth-telling and Stability in School Choice Problems: Theory and Experiment

2016 Fiscal Year Final Research Report

• Project/Area Number: 15K03357
• Research Category: Grant-in-Aid for Scientific Research (C)
• Allocation Type: Multi-year Fund
• Section: 一般
• Research Field: Economic theory
• Research Institution: Future University-Hakodate
• Principal Investigator: Kawagoe Toshiji 公立はこだて未来大学, システム情報科学部, 教授 (80272277)
• Co-Investigator(Kenkyū-buntansha): 瀧澤 弘和 中央大学, 経済学部, 教授 (80297720)
• Project Period (FY): 2015-04-01 – 2017-03-31
• Keywords: マッチング理論 / マーケット・デザイン / ゲーム理論 / 実験経済学

Outline of Final Research Achievements

Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism is the most popular matching mechanism in school choice problem. In a school choice problem, given schools' priority orderings over students being publicly announced, students submit their preference rankings over schools. Under DA mechanism, submitting true preference is dominant strategy for each student. However, non-negligible numbers of students deviate from the dominant strategy in reality.
To identify the pattern of deviation from the dominant strategy, we conducted a series of laboratory experiments. We found that students follows 'skipping-down' strategy that attributes a higher rank to schools that give those students higher priority.
Then, we derived a certain condition that the skipping-down strategy is rational in the sense that it constitutes Nash equilibrium and that the resulting matching under skipping-down strategy is stable.

Free Research Field

実験経済学