Umut Dur (North Carolina State University) and myself have a new WP titled “Capacity design in school choice”. The latest version is available at: https://papers.ssrn.com/sol3/papers.cfm?abstract_id=3898719.

Abstract: “We study a new variant of the school choice problem in which capacities can be altered by distributing additional seats across schools in response to students’ reported preferences. We show that heuristics solutions to this capacity design problem can be inefficient, even if they focus on allocating seats to the most demanded schools. However, we introduce a simple myopic algorithm that characterizes the set of efficient matchings among those that respect priorities.”

Andrea Moro (Vanderbilt University) and myself have a new WP titled “Exclusion of Extreme Jurors and Minority Representation: The Effect of Jury Selection Procedures“. The latest version is available at: https://ssrn.com/abstract=3784830.

Abstract: “We compare two established jury selection procedures meant to safeguard against the inclusion of biased jurors, that are also perceived as causing minorities to be under- represented in juries. The Strike and Replace procedure presents potential jurors one- by-one to the parties, while the Struck procedure presents all potential jurors before the parties exercise vetoes. In equilibrium, Struck more effectively excludes extreme jurors than Strike and Replace but leads to a worse representation of minorities. Simulations suggest that the advantage of Struck in terms of excluding extremes is sizable in a wide range of cases. In contrast, Strike and Replace only provides a significantly better representation of minorities if the minority and majority are heavily polarized. The size of these effects quantitatively depends on parameters. When parameters are estimated to match the parties’ selection of jurors by race with jury-selection data from Mississippi in trials against black defendants, the procedures’ outcomes are substantially different, and the size of the trade-off between objectives can be quantitatively evaluated.”

Check out my new working paper with John Nay and Jonathan Gilligan at http://arxiv.org/abs/1603.08961.