We present an experimental study where we analyze three well-known matching mechanisms-the Boston, the Gale-Shapley, and the Top Trading Cycles mechanisms-in different informational settings. Our experimental results are consistent with the theory, suggesting that the TTC mechanism outperforms both the Boston and the Gale-Shapley mechanisms in terms of efficiency and it is slightly more successful than the Gale-Shapley mechanism regarding the proportion of truthful preference revelation, whereas manipulation is stronger under the Boston mechanism. In addition, even though agents are much more likely to revert to truth-telling in lack of information about the others' payoffs-ignorance may be beneficial in this context-the TTC mechanism results less sensitive to the amount of information that participants hold. These results therefore suggest that the use of the TTC mechanism in practice is more desirable than of the others.

In the context of school choice, we experimentally study how behavior and outcomes are affected when, instead of submitting rankings in the student proposing or receiving deferred acceptance (DA) mechanism, participants make decisions dynamically, going through the steps of the underlying algorithms. Our main results show that, contrary to theory, (a) in the dynamic student proposing DA mechanism, participants propose to schools respecting the order of their true preferences slightly more often than in its static version while, (b) in the dynamic student receiving DA mechanism, participants react to proposals by always respecting the order and not accepting schools in the tail of their true preferences more often than in the corresponding static version. As a consequence, for most problems we test, no significant differences exist between the two versions of the student proposing DA mechanisms in what stability and average payoffs are concerned, but the dynamic version of the student receiving DA mechanism delivers a clear improvement over its static counterpart in both dimensions. In fact, in the aggregate, the dynamic school proposing DA mechanism is the best performing mechanism.