Research Topic A

School choice, university admissions, and other matching markets

When workers are looking for jobs, students apply for seats at schools and universities, or citizens want to schedule appointments at public offices, matches between the two sides need to be formed. Such matching markets differ in a number of important ways from markets for consumer goods. For example, supply and demand are often coordinated not by prices, but by other criteria, such as academic performance for university admissions. We investigate existing mechanisms that match children to schools and students to universities in Germany. The tools of market design are used to improve upon the existing mechanisms and propose new ones.

Basteck, Christian (2022): “Characterising Scoring Rules by Their Solution in Iteratively Undominated Strategies.” In: Economic Theory, Vol. 74, 161–208.

Basteck, Christian/Klaus, Bettina/Kübler, Dorothea (2021): “How Lotteries in School Choice Help to Level the Playing Field.” In: Games and Economic Behavior, Vol. 129, 198–237.

Basteck, Christian/Mantovani, Marco (2022): “Aiding Applicants. Leveling the Playing Field within the Immediate Acceptance Mechanism.” In: Review of Economic Design, advance access, 06.01.2022, online: https://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00283-2.

Grenet, Julien/He, YingHua/Kübler, Dorothea (2022): “Preference Discovery in University Admissions. The Case for Dynamic Multioffer Mechanisms.” In: Journal of Political Economy, Vol. 130(6), 1427–1476.

Hakimov, Rustamdjan/Heller, C.-Philipp/Kübler, Dorothea/Kurino, Morimitsu (2021): “How to Avoid Black Markets for Appointments with Online Booking Systems.” In: American Economic Review, Vol. 111(7), 2127–2151.

Hakimov, Rustamdjan/Kübler, Dorothea (2021): “Experiments on Centralized School Choice and College Admissions. A Survey. ” In: Experimental Economics, Vol. 24(2), 434–488.

Kübler, Dorothea/Ockenfels, Axel (2020): „Überkreuznierenspenden in Deutschland?“ In: Medizinrecht - MedR, Jg. 38(2), 89–94.

These topics are also studied in the project ‘Education Decisions, Market Design, and Student Outcomes’ which is part of the DFG-funded CRC TRR 190 ‘Rationality and Competition,’ and in the completed Leibniz SAW project ‘Market Design by Public Authorities.’