American Economic Review Vol. 107 No. 12 2017

The Welfare Effects of Coordinated Assignment: Evidence from the New York City High School Match

Atila Abdulkadiroğlu¹; Nikhil Agarwal²; Parag A. Pathak³

¹ Department of Economics, Duke University, 213 Social Sciences Building, Durham, NC 27708, and NBER (email: ) · ² Department of Economics, MIT, 50 Memorial Drive, Cambridge, MA 02142, and NBER (email: ) · ³ Department of Economics, MIT, 50 Memorial Drive, E52-426, Cambridge, MA 02139, and NBER (email: )

Abstract

Coordinated single-offer school assignment systems are a popular education reform. We show that uncoordinated offers in NYC's school assignment mechanism generated mismatches. One-third of applicants were unassigned after the main round and later administratively placed at less desirable schools. We evaluate the effects of the new coordinated mechanism based on deferred acceptance using estimated student preferences. The new mechanism achieves 80 percent of the possible gains from a no-choice neighborhood extreme to a utilitarian benchmark. Coordinating offers dominates the effects of further algorithm modifications. Students most likely to be previously administratively assigned experienced the largest gains in welfare and subsequent achievement.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20151425

Volume

107

Issue

12

Pages

3635-3689

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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