Constrained School Choice: An Experimental Study
31 pages, 18 tables.-- JEL classification: C72, C78, D78, I20.-- Trabajo publicado como artículo en American Economic Review 100(4): 1860-1874 (2010).-- http://dx.doi.org/10.1257/aer.100.4.1860 ; The literature on school choice assumes that families can submit a preference list over all the schools they want to be assigned to. However, in many real-life instances families are only allowed to submit a list containing a limited number of schools. Subjects' incentives are drastically affected, as more individuals manipulate their preferences. Including a safety school in the constrained list explains most manipulations. Competitiveness across schools play an important role. Constraining choices increases segregation and affects the stability and efficiency of the final allocation. Remarkably, the constraint reduces significantly the proportion of subjects playing a dominated strategy. ; The authors acknowledge support of Barcelona GSE Research Network and of the Government of Catalonia, Ramón y Cajal contracts of the Spanish Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología, the Spanish Plan Nacional I+D+I (SEJ2005-01481, SEJ2005-01690 and FEDER), the Generalitat de Catalunya (SGR2005-00626) and the Consolider-Ingenio 2010 (CSD2006-00016) program. This paper is part of the Polarization and Conflict Project CIT-2-CT-2004-506084 funded by the European Commission-DG Research Sixth Framework Program. ; Peer reviewed