TY  - BOOK
AU  - Pathak,Parag A.
AU  - Sönmez,Tayfun
ED  - National Bureau of Economic Research.
TI  - School Admissions Reform in Chicago and England: Comparing Mechanisms by Their Vulnerability to Manipulation 
T2  - NBER working paper series
PY  - 2011///
CY  - Cambridge, Mass.
PB  - National Bureau of Economic Research
N1  - February 2011; Hardcopy version available to institutional subscribers
N2  - In Fall 2009, officials from Chicago Public Schools changed their assignment mechanism for coveted spots at selective college preparatory high schools midstream. After asking about 14,000 applicants to submit their preferences for schools under one mechanism, the district asked them re-submit their preferences under a new mechanism.  Officials were concerned that "high-scoring kids were being rejected simply because of the order in which they listed their college prep preferences" under the abandoned mechanism. What is somewhat puzzling is that the new mechanism is also manipulable. This paper introduces a method to compare mechanisms based on their vulnerability to manipulation. Under our notion, the old mechanism is more manipulable than the new Chicago mechanism. Indeed, the old Chicago mechanism is at least as manipulable as any other plausible mechanism. A number of similar transitions between mechanisms took place in England after the widely popular Boston mechanism was ruled illegal in 2007. Our approach provides support for these and other recent policy changes involving matching mechanisms
UR  - https://www.nber.org/papers/w16783
UR  - http://dx.doi.org/10.3386/w16783
ER  -