School Choice Mechanisms, Information Acquisition and League Tables (Center for Institutional Studies Research Seminar)

Speaker: Georgy Artemov (University of Melbourne, Department of Economics)

Speaker: Georgy Artemov (University of Melbourne, Department of Economics) 

July 11, Friday, Maysnitskaya 24, building 3, room 424, 18.30. 

In this paper we study a costly information acquisition problem in school choice. Students applying to schools do not know precisely their valuation for a school, but can learn it at a cost. We show that Deferred Acceptance Algorithm (DAA) provides low incentives for students to obtain this information, compared to Boston mechanism or social optimum. If students do not acquire information, DAA reduces to random assignment. The policy implication is that the introduction of DAA should be accompanied by measures that promote information acquisition.