Game Theory and School Choice

Adam Azzam, UNL

Meeting Time: February 1, 2011, 2:00-2:50pm

Abstract: The school choice problem concerns the design and implementation of matching mechanisms that produce school assignments for students within a given public school district. Previously considered criteria for evaluating proposed mechanisms such as stability, strategyproofness and Pareto efficiency do not always translate into desirable student assignments. In this note we propose methods to expand upon the notion of desirability for a given assignment mechanism by focusing on honoring student preferences. In particular we define two new student-optimal criteria that are not met by any previously employed mechanism in the school choice literature. We then use these criteria to adapt a well-known combinatorial optimization technique (Hungarian algorithm) to the school choice problem. In particular we create two mechanisms, each geared specifically to perform optimally with respect to one of the new criteria. Both mechanisms yield "student-optimal" outcomes. We discuss the practical implications and limitations of our approach at the end of the article.