Unified versus divided enrollment in school choice: Improving student welfare in Chicago

Battal Doğan, M. Bumin Yenmez*

*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journalArticle (Academic Journal)peer-review

7 Citations (Scopus)
192 Downloads (Pure)

Abstract

The Chicago Board of Education is implementing a centralized clearinghouse to assign students to schools since 2018-19 admissions. In this clearinghouse, each student can simultaneously be admitted to a selective and a nonselective school. We study this divided enrollment system and show that an alternative unified enrollment system, which elicits the preferences of students over all schools and assigns each student to only one school, is better for students when choice rules of schools are substitutable. If the choice rule of a school is not substitutable, then there exist student preferences such that at least one student strictly prefers the divided enrollment system to the unified enrollment system. Furthermore, we characterize the sources of inefficiency in the divided enrollment system when choice rules of schools are substitutable.

Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)366 - 373
Number of pages8
JournalGames and Economic Behavior
Volume118
Early online date26 Sept 2019
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Nov 2019

Bibliographical note

The acceptance date for this record is provisional and based upon the month of publication for the article.

Research Groups and Themes

  • ECON Microeconomic Theory
  • ECON CEPS Education

Keywords

  • Market design
  • School choice
  • Unified enrollment

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