Game Theory and Mathematical Economics Research Seminar
Lecturer:
Prof. Ori Heffetz (HUJI and Cornell University)
Co-authors:
Yannai Gonczarowski (Harvard University), Guy Ishai (Hebrew University), and Clayton Thomas (Princeton University)
Title:
Describing Deferred Acceptance to Participants: Experimental Analysis
Abstract:
Designed markets often rely on carefully crafted descriptions of mechanisms, which mostly attempt to convey as directly as possible what the outcome of the market will be. Are there principled, alternative theories of how to construct descriptions to expose different properties of mechanisms? Recently-proposed menu descriptions aim to provide such a theory towards exposing the strategyproofness of real-world matching mechanisms such as Deferred Acceptance. We conduct an incentivized experiment (N = 542) to test the ability of a menu description of Deferred Acceptance (compared to a traditional description) to affect participants' understanding of strategyproofness—as measured in newly designed tests—and their behavior. We also include treatments designed to convey the definition of strategyproofness itself rather than the full details of the mechanism, with one treatment inspired by traditional definitions and one inspired by menu descriptions. We find that (1) participants understand DA mechanics when given either traditional or menu descriptions, but that (2) this does not translate to understanding strategyproofness: only a menu description focused on conveying strategyproofness—without conveying DA mechanics—improves strategyproofness understanding relative to a control group. (3) The overall behavioral effects are small, but we find a strong relation between strategyproofness understanding and straightforward ("truthtelling") behavior; the above menu description shifts the largest group of participants to close to 100% on both these measures.
Location:
Eilan Hall, Feldman Building, Second Floor, Edmond Safra Campus.