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Journal of Political Economy Vol. 125 No. 1 2017

Chinese College Admissions and School Choice Reforms: A Theoretical Analysis

Yan Chen1; Onur Kesten2

1 University of Michigan–Ann Arbor · 2 Carnegie Mellon University

Abstract

Each year approximately 10 million high school seniors in China compete for 6 million seats through a centralized college admissions system. Within the last decade, many provinces have transitioned from a "sequential" to a "parallel" mechanism to make their admissions decisions. In this study, we characterize a parametric family of application-rejection assignment mechanisms, including the sequential, deferred acceptance, and parallel mechanisms in a nested framework. We show that all of the provinces that have abandoned the sequential mechanism have moved toward less manipulable and more stable mechanisms. We also show that existing empirical evidence is consistent with our theoretical predictions.

DOI
10.1086/689773
Volume
125
Issue
1
Pages
99-139
Language
en
Sources
bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

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