Preference intensities and risk aversion in school choice: a laboratory experiment

We experimentally investigate in the laboratory prominent mechanisms that are employed in school choice programs to assign students to public schools and study how individual behavior is influenced by preference intensities and risk aversion. Our main results show that (a) the Gale–Shapley mechanism is more robust to changes in cardinal preferences than the Boston mechanism independently of whether individuals can submit a complete or only a restricted ranking of the schools and (b) subjects with a higher degree of risk aversion are more likely to play “safer” strategies under the Gale–Shapley but not under the Boston mechanism. Both results have important implications for enrollment planning and the possible protection risk averse agents seekinfo:eu-repo/semantics/publishedVersio

Preference intensities and risk aversion in school choice: A laboratory experiment

We experimentally investigate in the laboratory prominent mechanisms that are employed in school choice programs to assign students to public schools and study how individual behavior is influenced by preference intensities and risk aversion. Our main results show that (a) the Gale-Shapley mechanism is more robust to changes in cardinal preferences than the Boston mechanism independently of whether individuals can submit a complete or only a restricted ranking of the schools and (b) subjects with a higher degree of risk aversion are more likely to play >safer> strategies under the Gale-Shapley but not under the Boston mechanism. Both results have important implications for enrollment planning and the possible protection risk averse agents seek. © 2012 Economic Science Association.F. Klijn gratefully acknowledges a research fellowship from Harvard Business School for academic year 2009–2010. He also gratefully acknowledges support from Plan Nacional I+D+i (ECO2008-04784 and ECO2011-29847), Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR2009-01142), and the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 (CSD2006-00016) program. J. Pais gratefully acknowledges financial support from Fundação para a Ciência e a Tecnologia under project reference no. PTDC/EGE-ECO/113403/2009. M. Vorsatz gratefully acknowledges financial support from the Spanish Ministry of Education and Science through the project ECO2009-07530Peer Reviewe