Strategic schools under the Boston mechanism revisited

Abstract: We show that Ergin & Sönmez's (2006) results which show that for schools it is a dominant strategy to truthfully rank the students under the Boston mechanism, and that the Nash equilibrium outcomes in undominated strategies of the induced game are stable, rely crucially on two assumptions. First, (a) that schools need to be restricted to find all students acceptable, and (b) that students cannot observe the priorities set by the schools before submitting their preferences. We show that relaxing either assumption eliminates the strategy dominance, and that Nash equilibrium outcomes in undominated strategies for the simultaneous induced game in case (a) and subgame perfect Nash equilibria in case (b) may contain unstable matchings. We also show that when able to manipulate capacities, schools may only have an incentive to do so if students submit their preferences after observing the reported capacities

Object Details

• Location: Deutsche Nationalbibliothek Frankfurt am Main
• Extent: Online-Ressource, 21 S.
• Language: Englisch
• Notes: Veröffentlichungsversion ; begutachtet

References and Relationships

• Bibliographic citation: Discussion Papers / Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung, Forschungsschwerpunkt Markt und Entscheidung, Abteilung Verhalten auf Märkten ; Bd. SP II 2016-204

Classification and Topics

• Classification: Wirtschaft

Contributors, Places and Time

• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Mannheim
• (who): SSOAR, GESIS – Leibniz-Institut für Sozialwissenschaften e.V.
• (when): 2016
• Event: Veröffentlichung
• (where): Berlin
• (who): Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH
• (when): 2016
• Creator: Bó, Inácio Guerberoff Lanari ; Heller, Christian-Philipp
• Contributor: Wissenschaftszentrum Berlin für Sozialforschung gGmbH

Further information

• URN: urn:nbn:de:101:1-2021101108463328093502
• Rights: Open Access; Der Zugriff auf das Objekt ist unbeschränkt möglich.
• Last update: 25.03.2025, 1:52 PM CET