Who Gets What — and Why: The New Economics of Matchmaking and Market Design

by Alvin E. Roth

Stories about market design often begin with failure—failure to provide thickness, to ease congestion, or to make participation safe and simple.

These things make it difficult for judges to organize themselves in a way that lets them trust one another to obey the rules.

The same thing is true for each choice; a student who doesn’t get into his first seven choices has just as much chance of getting into his eighth choice as if he had listed it first. As long as students can rank as many schools as they like, their best strategy is their simplest: to rank schools in the order that they like them.