Implementing quotas in university admissions: An experimental analysis

Abstract

Standard-Nutzungsbedingungen:Die Dokumente auf EconStor dürfen zu eigenen wissenschaftlichen Zwecken und zum Privatgebrauch gespeichert und kopiert werden.Sie dürfen die Dokumente nicht für öffentliche oder kommerzielle Zwecke vervielfältigen, öffentlich ausstellen, öffentlich zugänglich machen, vertreiben oder anderweitig nutzen.Sofern die Verfasser die Dokumente unter Open-Content-Lizenzen (insbesondere CC-Lizenzen) zur Verfügung gestellt haben sollten, gelten abweichend von diesen Nutzungsbedingungen die in der dort genannten Lizenz gewährten Nutzungsrechte. Copyright remains with the author(s). Terms of use: Documents inDiscussion papers of the WZB serve to disseminate the research results of work in progress prior to publication to encourage the exchange of ideas and academic debate. Inclusion of a paper in the discussion paper series does not constitute publication and should not limit publication in any other venue. The discussion papers published by the WZB represent the views of the respective author(s) and not of the institute as a whole. Quotas for special groups of students often apply in school or university admission procedures. This paper studies the performance of two mechanisms to implement such quotas in a lab experiment. The first mechanism is a simplified version of the mechanism currently employed by the German central clearinghouse for university admissions, which first allocates seats in the quota for top-grade students before allocating all other seats among remaining applicants. The second is a modified version of the student-proposing deferred acceptance (SDA) algorithm, which simultaneously allocates seats in all quotas. Our main result is that the current procedure, designed to give top-grade students an advantage, actually harms them, as students often fail to grasp the strategic issues involved. The modified SDA algorithm significantly improves the matching for top-grade students and could thus be a valuable tool for redesigning university admissions in Germany. Keywords: College admissions; experiment; quotas; matching; Gale-Shapley mechanism;Boston mechanism JEL classification: C78; C92; D78; I20

Tiered Housing Allocation with Preannounced Rankings: An Experimental Analysis

“…There is also an expanding experimental literature on real-life matching problems. The experimental literature on the school choice problem has received substantial attention: Chen and Sönmez (2006) test the three school choice mechanisms discussed in Abdulkadiroglu and Sönmez (2003); Pais and Pintér (2008) and Featherstone and Niederle (2011) examine the effect of different information settings; Calsamiglia et al (2010) study the effects of limiting the number of schools that can be ranked; Klijn et al (2013) analyze the role of the intensity of preferences and risk aversion; Ding and Schotter (2013) test the effects of communication between subjects and Braun et al (2014) study the imposition of quotas in university admissions.…”

Two-sided Matching under the Conditions of Strict Order Relations and Threshold Orders

“…: Q P P P P P P , 7 5 1 3 4 6 2 : Q P P P P P P , 8 : Q P P P P P P , oooo  . In order to solve the above two-sided matching problem, the proposed approach is used and the matching process is displayed as follows.…”

“…The two-sided matching problems exist widely in many fields of real life, such as stable marriage assignment [1][2][3][4], college admission [5][6][7], employee selection [8][9][10], personnel assignment [11][12][13] and trading partner selection [14]. Therefore two-sided matching is a research topic with extensive application backgrounds.…”

Dynamic incentive effects of assignment mechanisms: Experimental evidence

“…There has been considerable interest in examining experimentally the static properties of assignment mechanisms, especially strategy proofness (see, e.g., Braun, Dwenger, Kübler, & Westkamp, ; Calsamiglia, Haeringer, & Klijn, ; Pais & Pinter, ).…”