School choice mechanisms and the families who use them
School choice, market design, stable matching and deferred acceptance appear on 89 recent papers, mostly in economics. Dozens of cities now assign school places with matching algorithms. Do families understand the rules well enough to benefit, and do the assignments change segregation and achievement?
What prompted this
Since October 2025, 89 papers carry a school-choice, matching-market, stable-matching, deferred-acceptance, market-design or assignment-mechanism keyword (72 in economics journals): "school choice" on 21, "market design" on 18, "stable matching" on 9, "matching markets" on 9, "deferred acceptance" on 8. Seventeen were published in July–September 2026 against about 21 per quarter earlier.
Questions
- In cities using deferred acceptance, what share of families still submit lists that are not in their true order, and who loses from it?
- Did the switch from older mechanisms change school segregation by income, and did it change achievement for students who got their preferred school?
- Do information interventions (ranked lists with admission chances) change choices and outcomes?
Data that could help
Application lists and assignments from city school districts, student outcomes, and the dates of mechanism changes.
Next step
Use application data from a district that switched to deferred acceptance to measure changes in list length, strategic ranking and segregation.