How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field. (English) Zbl 1470.91190
Summary: School authorities in the UK and the US advocate the use of lotteries to desegregate schools. We study a school choice mechanism employed in Berlin where a lottery quota is embedded in the immediate acceptance (IA) mechanism, and compare it to the deferred acceptance mechanism (DA) with a lottery quota. In both mechanisms, some seats are allocated based on academic achievement (e.g., grades), while seats in the lottery quota are allocated randomly. We find that, in theory, a lottery quota strengthens truth-telling in DA by eliminating non-truth-telling equilibria. Furthermore, the equilibrium outcome is stable for DA with a lottery but not for IA with a lottery. These predictions are borne out in the experiment. Moreover, the lottery quota leads to more diverse school populations in the experiment, as predicted. Students with the lowest grades profit more from the introduction of the lottery under IA than under DA.
MSC:
| 91B68 | Matching models |
Keywords:
school choice; immediate acceptance mechanism; deferred acceptance mechanism; lotteries; experiment; market designSoftware:
Z-TreeReferences:
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