Essays in market design
Abstract/Contents
- Abstract
- In this dissertation, we study two related classes of market institutions whose structure and design have been heavily influenced by economic theory: matching markets and auctions. In the first two chapters, we focus on matching markets, which have many applications, including hospital residency labor markets, branch assignment in the military, and school choice, which will be our main focus. In the last chapter, we focus on auction markets, which have many connections with matching markets. Chapter 1 studies the design of school choice mechanisms in school districts that desire demographically diverse student bodies in all schools by placing floors (lower quotas) and ceilings (upper quotas) on the number of students from each demographic type who can be assigned to each school. We identify inefficiencies in algorithms currently in existence and provide a new dynamic quotas deferred acceptance algorithm that is more efficient while still satisfying all diversity goals. In addition, we show that our algorithm is strategyproof, i.e., truth-telling is a dominant strategy for parents when reporting their preferences. These results suggest that replacing current mechanisms with our mechanism should improve the performance of matching markets with floor and ceiling constraints. Chapter 2 continues the analysis of school choice algorithms by comparing two widely used algorithms, deferred acceptance and the Boston mechanism (also known as immediate acceptance) with respect to incentives and efficiency. While deferred acceptance is strategyproof, this beneficial property does not come without a cost. We show that in equilibrium, the non-strategyproof Boston mechanism may ex-ante Pareto dominate deferred acceptance. This may be relevant to school district leaders whose goal is to maximize the overall ex-ante welfare of the families in the district. Chapter 3 studies auction markets, another important class of market design problems where the design of the mechanism has important implications on strategic and efficiency properties. An important issue to sellers in auctions is potential collusion between the bidders, as this can lower seller profits. However, the standard approach to modeling collusion does not capture signaling and information leakage problems that can arise when it is one of the parties with private information who is making the proposal. We build a model of collusion in a second price auction that captures these issues by building a model of collusion in which an informed party ('the propser') has the option of offering a collusive contract to a second bidder ('the receiver'). We characterize the equilibria of this game and analyze the ex-ante profits accruing to each player. We find that while both the proposer and the receiver are better off than with no collusion, the receiver achieves higher profits than the proposer, i.e., there is a first-mover disadvantage.
Description
| Type of resource | text |
|---|---|
| Form | electronic; electronic resource; remote |
| Extent | 1 online resource. |
| Publication date | 2014 |
| Issuance | monographic |
| Language | English |
Creators/Contributors
| Associated with | Troyan, Peter Gerard, Jr |
|---|---|
| Associated with | Stanford University, Department of Economics. |
| Primary advisor | Kojima, Fuhito |
| Thesis advisor | Kojima, Fuhito |
| Thesis advisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Thesis advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
| Advisor | Niederle, Muriel |
| Advisor | Roth, Alvin E, 1951- |
Subjects
| Genre | Theses |
|---|
Bibliographic information
| Statement of responsibility | Peter Gerard Troyan, Jr. |
|---|---|
| Note | Submitted to the Department of Economics. |
| Thesis | Thesis (Ph.D.)--Stanford University, 2014. |
| Location | electronic resource |
Access conditions
- Copyright
- © 2014 by Peter Troyan
- License
- This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution Non Commercial 3.0 Unported license (CC BY-NC).
Also listed in
Loading usage metrics...