Browsing by Author "Chen, Yan"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation
    (Springer Nature, 2022) Chen, Yan; He, YingHua
    When participating in school choice, students may incur information acquisition costs to learn about school quality. This paper investigates how two popular school choice mechanisms, the (Boston) Immediate Acceptance and the Deferred Acceptance, incentivize students’ information acquisition. Specifically, we show that only the Immediate Acceptance mechanism incentivizes students to learn their own cardinal and others’ preferences. We demonstrate that information acquisition costs affect the efficiency of each mechanism and the welfare ranking between the two. In the case where everyone has the same ordinal preferences, we evaluate the welfare effects of various information provision policies by education authorities.
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    Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation
    (Springer Nature, 2022) Chen, Yan; He, YingHua
    When participating in school choice, students may incur information acquisition costs to learn about school quality. This paper investigates how two popular school choice mechanisms, the (Boston) Immediate Acceptance and the Deferred Acceptance, incentivize students’ information acquisition. Specifically, we show that only the Immediate Acceptance mechanism incentivizes students to learn their own cardinal and others’ preferences. We demonstrate that information acquisition costs affect the efficiency of each mechanism and the welfare ranking between the two. In the case where everyone has the same ordinal preferences, we evaluate the welfare effects of various information provision policies by education authorities.
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    Information acquisition and provision in school choice: An experimental study
    (Elsevier, 2021) Chen, Yan; He, YingHua
    When participating in school choice, students often spend substantial effort acquiring information about schools. We investigate how two popular mechanisms incentivize students' information acquisition in the laboratory. While students' willingness to pay for information is significantly greater under the Immediate than the Deferred Acceptance mechanism, most students over-invest in information acquisition, especially when they are more curious or believe that others invest more. Additionally, some students never invest in information acquisition but benefit equally from information provision. Both free provision and costly acquisition of information on students' own preferences increase their payoffs and allocative efficiency, whereas provision of information that helps students better assessing admission chances reduces wasteful investments. Our results also suggest that agents' information preferences, such as curiosity, can play an important role in market design theory and policy.
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    Smart cantilever beams for nanomanipulation
    (2009) Chen, Yan; Ghorbel, Fathi H.
    A smart micro cantilever beam, consisting of an atomic force microscope probe bonded with a piezoelectric actuator, is proposed to enhance the ability of mechanical nanomanipulation. A precise three-section Euler-Bernoulli beam model is developed to describe the dynamics of the beam. The forced vibration solution of this model with respect to two independent inputs from the piezoelectric actuator and the base excitation is derived. Through the solution and the geometry relationship, the trajectory of the end of the tip is obtained from the motion of the free end of the AFM probe. Based on the resonant response from two harmonic inputs, nano-scale elliptical and linear tip trajectories are predicted at the second dynamic mode. Analytical and numerical studies show that the characteristics of the resulting trajectories are influenced by the magnitudes of the two inputs. The potential applications of the elliptical and linear trajectories for nanomanipulation are proposed.
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    Universal Impurity-Induced Bound State in Topological Superfluids
    (American Physical Society, 2013) Hu, Hui; Jiang, Lei; Pu, Han; Chen, Yan; Liu, Xia-Ji; Rice Quantum Institute
    We predict a universal midgap bound state in topological superfluids, induced by either nonmagnetic or magnetic impurities in the strong scattering limit. This universal state is similar to the lowest-energy Caroli–de Gennes–Martricon bound state in a vortex core, but is bound to localized impurities. We argue that the observation of such a universal bound state can be a clear signature for identifying topological superfluids. We theoretically examine our argument for a spin-orbit coupled ultracold atomic Fermi gas trapped in a two-dimensional harmonic potential by performing extensive self-consistent calculations within the mean-field Bogoliubov–de Gennes theory. A realistic scenario for observing a universal bound state in ultracold 40K atoms is proposed.