School Choice with Transferable Students' Characteristics (Working paper)

 By

 Carmelo Rodríguez-Álvarez
Instituto Complutense de Análisis Económico
Universidad Complutense de Madrid

and

Antonio Romero-Medina
Department of Economics
Universidad Carlos III de Madrid

Abstract: We consider a school choice problem where   schools' priorities depend  on   transferable students' characteristics. A school choice algorithm    selects for each profile of students' preferences over  schools an assignment of students to schools and a final allocation of characteristics (an extended matching).

We define the Student Exchange with Transferable Characteristics (SETC) class of algorithms. Each SETC always selects a constrained efficient extended matching. That is an   extended matching  that  i) is stable according to the priorities generated by the final allocation of characteristics and  ii)  is not Pareto dominated by another  stable extended matching. Every constrained efficient extended matching that Pareto improves upon a stable extended matching can be obtained via an algorithm in the SETC class. When students' characteristics are fully transferable, a specific  algorithm in the SETC family    is equivalent to the application of the Top Trade Cycle Algorithm starting from the Student Optimal Stable Matching

Keywords: School Choice, Transferable Characteristics, Priorities, Constrained Efficiency.

JEL: C78, D61, D78, I20

 https://www.ucm.es/icae/file/school-choice-with-transferable-students-characteristics