Flip Klijn

Abstract: The literature on school choice assumes that families can submit a preference list over all the schools they want to be assigned to. However, in many real-life instances families are only allowed to submit a list containing a limited number of schools. Subjects ’ incentives are drastically affected, as more individuals manipulate their preferentes. Including a safety school in the constrained list explains most manipulations. Competitiveness across schools play an important role. Constraining choices increases segregation and affects the stability and effi-ciency of the final allocation. Remarkably, the constraint reduces significantly the proportion of subjects playing a dominated strategy