College admissions in three Chinese provinces: Boston mechanism vs. deferred acceptance mechanism

Abstract

The deferred acceptance mechanism (DA) replaced the Boston mechanism (BM) in college admissions in China. In this paper, I compare the empirical performance of these two mechanisms in the Chinese context by developing an empirical model and applying it to college admissions in Guangxi, Hebei, and Sichuan provinces. Then, I conduct counterfactuals to empirically compare the BM and DA in these three provinces for given years. I find that not only is the BM superior to the DA in terms of total welfare but also that most students receive lower utility after the switch from the BM to DA.