This website uses cookies.

By clicking the "Accept" button or continuing to browse our site, you agree to first-party and session-only cookies being stored on your device to enhance site navigation and analyze site performance and traffic. For more information on our use of cookies, please see our Privacy Policy.

Efficient Matching in the School Choice Problem

  • Philip J. Reny
American Economic Review
vol. 112, no. 6, June 2022
(pp. 2025-43)
Download Full Text PDF

Abstract

Stable matchings in school choice needn't be Pareto efficient and can leave thousands of students worse off than necessary. Call a matching μ priority-neutral if no matching can make any student whose priority is violated by μ better off without violating the priority of some student who is made worse off. Call a matching priority-efficient if it is priority-neutral and Pareto efficient. We show that there is a unique priority-efficient matching and that it dominates every priority-neutral matching and every stable matching. Moreover, truth-telling is a maxmin optimal strategy for every student in the mechanism that selects the priority-efficient matching.

Citation

Reny, Philip J. 2022. "Efficient Matching in the School Choice Problem." American Economic Review, 112 (6): 2025-43. DOI: 10.1257/aer.20210240

Additional Materials

JEL Classification

  • C78 Bargaining Theory; Matching Theory
  • I21 Analysis of Education
  • I28 Education: Government Policy