Gaming the Boston School Choice Mechanism in Beijing

The Boston (Immediate-Acceptance) mechanism is criticized for its poor incentive and welfare performance compared with the Gale-Shapley deferred-acceptance mechanism (DA). Using school choice data from Beijing, I investigate parents' behavior under the Boston mechanism, taking into account parents' possible mistakes when they strategize. Evidence shows that parents are overcautious as they play ``safe'' strategies too often. There is no evidence showing that wealthier and more-educated parents are any more adept at strategizing. If others behave as in the data, an average naive parent who is always truth-telling experiences a utility loss in switching from the Boston to DA, equivalent to an 8% increase in the distance from home to school or substituting a 13% chance at the best school with an equal chance at the second best. She has a 27% chance to be better off and a 55% chance being worse off. If instead parents are either sophisticated (always playing a best response against others) or naive, results are mixed: Under DA, naive ones enjoy a utility gain on average when less than 80% of the population is naive, while still about 42% worse off and only 39% better off. Sophisticated parents always lose more