Title
How lotteries in school choice help to level the playing field
Abstract
School authorities in the UK and the US advocate the use of lotteries to desegregate schools. We study a school choice mechanism employed in Berlin where a lottery quota is embedded in the immediate acceptance (IA) mechanism, and compare it to the deferred acceptance mechanism (DA) with a lottery quota. In both mechanisms, some seats are allocated based on academic achievement (e.g., grades), while seats in the lottery quota are allocated randomly. We find that, in theory, a lottery quota strengthens truth-telling in DA by eliminating non-truth-telling equilibria. Furthermore, the equilibrium outcome is stable for DA with a lottery but not for IA with a lottery. These predictions are borne out in the experiment. Moreover, the lottery quota leads to more diverse school populations in the experiment, as predicted. Students with the lowest grades profit more from the introduction of the lottery under IA than under DA.
Year
DOI
Venue
2021
10.1016/j.geb.2021.05.010
Games and Economic Behavior
Keywords
DocType
Volume
C78,C91,D47,D82,I24
Journal
129
ISSN
Citations 
PageRank 
0899-8256
0
0.34
References 
Authors
0
3
Name
Order
Citations
PageRank
Christian Basteck100.34
Bettina Klaus215524.51
Dorothea Kübler3187.50