Incontestable Assignments
Theoretical Economics
2024-03-04 v2
Abstract
In school districts where assignments are exclusively determined by a clearinghouse students can only appeal their assignment with a valid reason. An assignment is incontestable if it is appeal-proof. We study incontestability when students do not observe the other students' preferences and assignments. Incontestability is shown to be equivalent to individual rationality, non-wastefulness, and respect for top-priority sets (a weakening of justified envy). Stable mechanisms and those Pareto dominating them are incontestable, as well as the Top-Trading Cycle mechanism (but Boston is not). Under a mild consistency property, incontestable mechanisms are i-indinstiguishable (Li, 2017), and share similar incentive properties.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2401.03598,
title = {Incontestable Assignments},
author = {Benoit Decerf and Guillaume Haeringer and Martin Van der Linden},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2401.03598},
year = {2024}
}