Publications

Dominated Choices under Deferred Acceptance Mechanism: The Effect of Admission Selectivity. Games and Economic Behavior (2024)

College applicants often make dominated choices even when a strategically simple mechanism such as deferred acceptance is in place. We study Hungarian college admissions, where deferred acceptance is used, and still many college applicants make revealed dominated choices: they forgo the free opportunity to receive a tuition waiver. Using two empirical strategies, we show that when admission with a tuition waiver becomes more selective, applicants make more revealed dominated choices. Our results suggest that dominated choices respond to economic incentives.

(link)

Dominated Choices in a Strategically Simple College Admissions Environment. Journal of Political Economy: Microeconomics (2023)

(joint with Ran I. Shorrer)

Although many centralized school assignment systems use the strategically simple deferred acceptance mechanism, applicants often make dominated choices. Using administrative data from Hungary, we show that 11 percent of college applicants forgo the free opportunity to receive a tuition waiver. Between 12.3 and 18.7 percent of these dominated choices are consequential, costing 6,600 dollars on average. Our results suggest that dominated choices are more common when their expected utility cost is lower. Since tuition waivers are highly demanded, dominated choices increase the total number applicants assigned to college.

(link)

Preference Heterogeneity and School Segregation. Journal of Public Economics (2021)

(joint with Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw)

This paper examines heterogeneity of school preferences between ethnic and social groups and quantifies the importance of this heterogeneity for school segregation. We use rich data from the secondary-school match in Amsterdam. Our key findings are that heterogeneity of preferences for schools is substantial and that 40% of school segregation by ethnicity and close to 25% of school segregation by household income, can be attributed to it. Ability tracking is the other main determinant of school segregation. Results from policy simulations indicate that minority quotas reduce segregation within ability tracks considerably, but this comes at the cost of many students receiving less-preferred assignments and a higher share of unassigned students.

(link)

Media: Vox Podcast

The Large Core of College Admission Markets: Theory and Evidence, EC ‘22: Proceedings of the 23rd ACM Conference on Economics and Computation (2022)

(joint with Péter Biró, Avinatan Hassidim, Assaf Romm, and Ran I. Shorrer)

Extended abstract: (link)

Working Papers

The (un)importance of School Assignment

(joint with Nadine Ketel, Hessel Oosterbeek, and Bas van der Klaauw)

We combine data from the Amsterdam secondary-school match with register data and survey data to estimate the effects of not being assigned to one’s first-ranked school on academic outcomes and on a wide range of other outcomes. For identification we use that secondary-school assignment in Amsterdam is based on the deferred acceptance mechanism with ties broken by lottery numbers. Losing the admission lottery for one’s first-ranked school affects the characteristics of the assigned school, the home-school distance and the characteristics of teachers and peers. Despite the different school environment, we find no negative effects on academic outcomes, nor on any other outcome, including: time on homework, help with homework, attitudes towards school, awareness of parents, behavior inside school, behavior outside school, school satisfaction, civic engagement, having friends, and students’ personality. It seems therefore that the concerns that parents of lottery losers express about their children’s school assignment are based on the characteristics of schools, teachers and peers and not on academic or non-academic outcomes.

(link)

The Large Core of College Admission Markets: Theory and Evidence. Revise and resubmit at Review of Economics and Statistics

(joint with Péter Biró, Avinatan Hassidim, Assaf Romm, and Ran I. Shorrer)

We study stable allocations in college admissions markets where students can attend. the same college under different financial terms. The deferred acceptance algorithm identifies a stable allocation where funding is allocated based on merit. While merit-based stable allocations assign the same students to college, non-merit-based stable allocations may differ in the number of students assigned to college. In large markets, this possibility requires heterogeneity in applicants’ sensitivity to financial terms. In Hungary, where such heterogeneity is present, a non-merit-based stable allocation would increase the number of assigned applicants by 1.9%, and affect 8.3% of the applicants relative to any merit-based stable allocation. These findings contrast sharply with findings from the matching (without contracts) literature.

Firm Consolidations and Labor Market Outcomes

(joint with Sabien Dobbelaere, Grace McCormack, and Daniel Prinz)

Using rich administrative data from the Netherlands, we study the consequences of firm consolidation for workers. For workers at acquired firms, takeovers are associated with a 8.5% drop in employment at the consolidated firm and a 2.6% drop in total labor income. These effects are persistent even four years later. We show that the primary mechanism for this job loss is labor restructuring at consolidating firms. Specifically, workers with higher-than-expected pay relative to their human capital and workers with skills that are likely already present at acquirers are less likely to be retained.

(link)

Media: IZA Commentary, VOXEU, Pro Market

Do Elite Schools Benefit their Students?

(joint with János Divényi)

This paper studies how enrollment in an elite school affects elite-school students' academic achievement in Hungary. Enrollment in a Hungarian elite school entails having academically stronger peers, a more-advanced, higher-paced curriculum, and teachers of high-qualification. Using non-parametric bounds, we show that enrollment in an elite school decreases female and low-ability students' mathematics test scores two years after enrollment. School value-added estimates, which lie within our non-parametric bounds, show that the negative short-run effects reverse four years after enrollment. These positive effects are concentrated at the upper end of the outcome distribution and they are stronger for high-ability students.

(link)

Book Chapters

Oorzaken van schoolsegregatie in Amsterdam (in Dutch)

(joint with Hessel Oosterbeek and Bas van der Klaauw)

Hoofdstuk 8 in H. van de Werfhorst en E. van Hest, Gelijke kansen in de stad, Amsterdam University Press.

Work in Progress

Measuring Students’ Cardinal Preferences for Schools

(joint with Monique de Haan, Pieter Gautier, Hessel Oosterbeek, and Bas van der Klaauw)

Measuring students’ cardinal preferences for schools is essential for the evaluation of school choice policies. It is unclear, however, how to best measure cardinal preferences. The recent literature uses discrete choice models to estimate students’ cardinal preferences for schools. In this paper we compare such estimated measures to measures elicited through survey questions. While we find that the estimated and elicited measures are highly correlated and are determined by the same factors, results in terms of policy simulations are different. Specifically, we find that welfare effects are larger when measured through elicited measures than through estimated measures. This implies that evaluations based on estimated cardinal preferences are likely to underestimate the welfare implications of school choice policies.