1,720,996 research outputs found
Contests at the workplace with and without prize selection: Testing theory in a field experiment
Full text linkWe conduct a field experiment with 302 workers of the microcredit company in Russia to study the effects of the different designs of a contest for monetary prizes at the workplace. We consider a standard all-pay auction design with two and four prizes of different size and compare it to "parallel" contests with the same prizes, but where participants have to choose the prize prior to the start of the competition and then the winner is selected only among the players who chose the same prize. Despite the theoretical predictions, the parallel contests lead to higher efforts for all players, but mainly by lower-ability players. Division of prizes leads to the predicted effects. In parallel contests, too many players choose the higher prize than equilibrium suggests. Overall, the parallel version of contests appeared to be more profitable for the firm
Drei Essays über das Design von Märkten unter Berücksichtigung des Verhaltens ökonomischer Aspekte
No full textThis thesis consists of three self-contained essays on behavioral market design. The first essay presents the results of a field experiment which tests the effects of advice and mechanism disclosure on the truth-telling rates of participants in a school choice problem using the Top Trading Cycles mechanism. The second essay analyzes college admissions with entrance exams, comparing both theoretically and experimentally two alternative designs: centralized and decentralized.
The third essay is built on the theory of the second one and compares standard and parallel contests in a field experiment with workers of a micro-credit company in Russia.Diese Dissertation umfasst drei eigenständige Essays über das Design von Märkten unter Berücksichtigung verhaltensökonomischer Aspekte. Der erste Essay analysiert die Ergebnisse eines Feldexperimentes zu dem Problem der Schulwahl unter der Anwendung des Top Trading Cycles Mechanismus. Insbesondere wird untersucht, wie sich zum einen die Erläuterung des verwendeten Zuteilungsmechanismus und zum anderen die Erklärung seiner Eigenschaften auf die Bereitschaft der Probanden, ihre wahren Präferenzen zu offenbaren, auswirkt. Der zweite Essay befasst sich mit der Zulassung zu Universitäten anhand von Aufnahmeprüfungen. Hierbei wird ein zentrales mit einem dezentralen Design sowohl theoretisch als auch experimentell verglichen. Der dritte Essay baut auf der im zweiten Essay entwickelten Theorie auf und vergleicht die Standardwettbewerbsform mit einem parallelen Wettbewerb anhand eines Feldexperiment mit ArbeitnehmerInnen einer Mikrokreditanstalt in Russland
Pick-an-object Mechanisms
Full text linkWe introduce a new family of mechanisms for one-sided matching markets,
denoted pick-an-object (PAO) mechanisms. When implementing an allocation rule
via PAO, agents are asked to pick an object from individualized menus. These
choices may be rejected later on, and these agents are presented with new
menus. When the procedure ends, agents are assigned the last object they
picked. We characterize the allocation rules that can be sequentialized by PAO
mechanisms, as well as the ones that can be implemented in a robust truthful
equilibrium. We justify the use of PAO as opposed to direct mechanisms by
showing that its equilibrium behavior is closely related to the one in
obviously strategy-proof (OSP) mechanisms, but implements commonly used rules,
such as Gale-Shapley DA and top trading cycles, which are not
OSP-implementable. We run laboratory experiments comparing truthful behavior
when using PAO, OSP, and direct mechanisms to implement different rules. These
indicate that agents are more likely to behave in line with the theoretical
prediction under PAO and OSP implementations than their direct counterparts
Iterative versus standard deferred acceptance: Experimental evidence
Full text linkWe run laboratory experiments where subjects are matched to colleges, and colleges are not strategic agents. We test the Gale-Shapley Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism versus the Iterative Deferred Acceptance Mechanism (IDAM), a matching mechanism based on a new family of procedures being used in the field, in which information about tentative allocations is provided while students make choices. We consider two variations of IDAM: one in which they are only informed about whether they are tentatively accepted or not (IDAM-NC) and one in which students are additionally informed at each step of the tentative cutoff values for acceptance at each school (IDAM). A significantly higher proportion of stable outcomes is reached both under IDAM and IDAM-NC than under DA. The difference can be explained by a higher proportion of subjects following an equilibrium strategy akin to truthful behavior under IDAM and IDAM-NC than truthful behavior itself under DA. Moreover, the provision of intermediate cutoff values in IDAM leads to higher rates of equilibrium behavior than in IDAM-NC and a higher robustness of stability between the rounds of experiments. Our findings provide substantial support for the rising practice of using iterative mechanisms in centralized college admissions in practice
The equitable top trading cycles mechanism for school choice
Full text linkA particular adaptation of Gale's top trading cycles procedure to school choice, the so-called TTC mechanism, has attracted much attention both in theory and practice due to its superior efficiency and incentive features. We discuss and introduce alternative adaptations of Gale's original procedure that can offer improvements over TTC in terms of equity along with various other distributional considerations. Instead of giving all the trading power to those students with the highest priority for a school, we argue for the distribution of the trading rights of all slots of each school among those who are entitled to a slot at that school, allowing them to trade in a thick market where additional constraints can be accommodated. We propose a particular mechanism of this kind, the Equitable Top Trading Cycles (ETTC) mechanism, which is also Pareto efficient and strategy-proof just like TTC and eliminates justified envy due to pairwise exchanges. Both in simulations and in the lab, ETTC generates significantly fewer number of justified envy situations than TTC
Monkey see, monkey do: Truth-telling in matching algorithms and the manipulation of others
Full text linkWe test the effect of the amount of information on the strategies played by others in the theoretically strategy-proof Top Trading Cycles (TTC) mechanism. We find that providing limited information on the strategies played by others has a negative and significant effect in truth-telling rates relative to full or no information about others' strategies. Subjects report truthfully more often when either full information or no information on the strategies played by others is available. Our results have potentially important implications for the design of markets based on strategy-proof matching algorithms
How to get truthful reporting in matching markets: a field experiment
Full text linkWe run a field experiment to test the truth-telling rates of the theoretically strategy-proof Top Trading Cycles mechanism (TTC) under different information conditions. First, we asked first-year economics students enrolled in an introductory microeconomics unit about which topic, among three, they would most like to write an essay on. Most students chose the same favorite topic. Then we used TTC to distribute students equally across the three options. We ran three treatments varying the information the students received about the mechanism. In the first treatment students were given a description of the matching mechanism. In the second they received a description of the strategy-proofness of the mechanism without details of the mechanism. Finally, in the third they were given both pieces of information. We find a significant and positive effect of describing the strategy-proofness on truth-telling rates. On the other hand, describing the matching mechanism has a significant and negative effect on truth-telling rates. (author's abstract
Experiments on centralized school choice and college admissions: a survey
No full textThe paper surveys the experimental literature on centralized matching markets, covering school choice and college admissions models. In the school choice model, one side of the market (schools) is not strategic, and rules (priorities) guide the acceptance decisions. The model covers applications such as school choice programs, centralized university admissions in many countries, and the centralized assignment of teachers to schools. In the college admissions model, both sides of the market are strategic. It applies to college and university admissions in countries where universities can select students, and centralized labor markets such as the assignment of doctors to hospitals. The survey discusses, among other things, the comparison of various centralized mechanisms, the optimality of participants’ strategies, learning by applicants and their behavioral biases, as well as the role of communication, information, and advice. The main experimental findings considered in the survey concern truth-telling and strategic manipulations by the agents, as well as the stability and efficiency of the matching outcome
Iterative Versus Standard Deferred Acceptance: Experimental Evidence★
No full textWe run laboratory experiments where subjects are matched to colleges, and colleges are not strategic agents. We test the Gale-Shapley Deferred Acceptance (DA) mechanism versus the Iterative Deferred Acceptance Mechanism (IDAM), a matching mechanism in which students make applications one at a time. We consider two variations of IDAM: one in which students are only informed of whether they have been tentatively accepted or not (IDAM-NC) and one in which, at each step, they are also informed of the tentative cutoff values for acceptance at each college (IDAM). A significantly higher proportion of stable outcomes is reached both under IDAM and IDAM-NC than under DA. The difference can be explained by a higher proportion of subjects following an equilibrium truthful strategy under iterative mechanisms than the truthful reporting under DA. We associate the benefits of iterative mechanisms relative to DA with the feedback of the outcome of applications provided between steps of the iterative mechanisms. This feedback allows subjects to learn that deviating strategies from truthful do not work as intended
Improving Transparency and Verifiability in School Admissions: Theory and Experiment
Full text linkStudents participating in centralized admissions procedures do not typically have access to the information used to determine their matched school, such as other students' preferences or school priorities. This can lead to doubts about whether their matched schools were computed correctly (the 'Verifiability Problem') or, at a deeper level, whether the promised admissions procedure was even used (the 'Transparency Problem'). In a general centralized admissions model that spans many popular applications, we show how these problems can be addressed by providing appropriate feedback to students, even without disclosing sensitive private information like other students' preferences or school priorities. In particular, we show that the Verifiability Problem can be solved by (1) publicly communicating the minimum scores required to be matched to a school ('cutoffs'); or (2) using 'predictable' preference elicitation procedures that convey rich 'experiential' information. In our main result, we show that the Transparency Problem can be solved by using cutoffs and predictable procedures together. We find strong support for these solutions in a laboratory experiment, and show how they can be simply implemented for popular school admissions applications involving top trading cycles, and deferred and immediate acceptance
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