Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation

Chen, Yan; He, YingHua

Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation

Files

2022_Chen_He_ET.pdf (1.03 MB)

Date

2022

Authors

Chen, Yan

He, YingHua

Publisher

Springer Nature

Abstract

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.

Type

Journal article

Citation

Chen, Yan and He, YingHua. "Information acquisition and provision in school choice: a theoretical investigation." Economic Theory, 74, (2022) Springer Nature: 293-327. https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-021-01376-3.

Published Version

https://doi.org/10.1007/s00199-021-01376-3

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