Matching Models

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Differential and Distributional Effects of Energy Efficiency Surveys: Evidence from Electricity Consumption * Our research investigates the magnitude of the effect of residential energy efficiency audit programs on later household electricity consumption. These programs are designed to increase awareness of household energy consumption with personalized feedback that will eventually lead to behavioral changes. In this type of survey, there is only a one-time interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. The objective of this study is to determine whether and to what extent such surveys lead to behavioral changes. We argue that the perceived complexity of the survey feedback will determine whether the subsequent behavior is sustainable. Then we analyze how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. However, the main evaluation problem involving these surveys is self-selection bias. To correct for this bias, we propose two non-parametric estimators by using a kernel-based propensity score matching approach. In the first method, we use "difference-indifferences" (DID) estimations. The second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. The evidence suggest that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by 6.7%, compared with customers who had not yet participated in the survey. In addition, as the quantiles of the distribution increase, the effect of the program decreases.

Three well-known aggregate regularities (i.e. Beveridge, Wage, and Okun's curves) seem to provide a quite complete picture of the interplay between labor market macro-dynamics and business cycle. Nevertheless, existing theoretical literature still lacks micro-founded models which are able to jointly account for these three crucial stylized facts. In this paper, we present an agent-based, evolutionary, model trying to formalize from the bottom up individual behaviors and interactions in both product and labor markets. We describe as endogenous processes both vacancy and wage setting, as well as matching and bargaining, demand and price formation. Firms enjoy labor productivity improvements (technological progress) and are selected on the base of their revealed competitiveness (which is also affected by their hiring-and wagesetting behaviors). Simulations show that the model is able to robustly reproduce Beveridge, Wage and Okun's curves under quite broad behavioral and institutional settings. Moreover, the system generates endogenously an Okun's coefficient greater than one even if individual firms employ production functions exhibiting constant returns to labor. Montecarlo simulations also indicate that statistically detectable shifts in Okun's and Beveridge curves emerge as the result of changes in institutional, behavioral, and technological parameters. Finally, the model generates quite sharp predictions about how system parameters affect aggregate performance (i.e. average GDP growth) and its volatility.

This paper aims to examine unemployment persistence in Spain by the so-called “ladder” effect. This arises when highly-skilled workers who do not find a job matching their skills accept jobs which previously were occupied by less qualified staff. We develop a dynamic ...

What makes money essential for the functioning of modern society? Through an experiment, we present evidence for the existence of a relevant behavioral dimension in addition to the standard theoretical arguments. Subjects faced repeated opportunities to help an anonymous counterpart who changed over time. Cooperation required trusting that help given to a stranger today would be returned by a stranger in the future. Cooperation levels declined when going from small to large groups of strangers, even if monitoring and payoffs from cooperation were invariant to group size. We then introduced intrinsically worthless tokens. Tokens endogenously became money: subjects took to reward help with a token and to demand a token in exchange for help. Subjects trusted that strangers would return help for a token. Cooperation levels remained stable as the groups grew larger. In all conditions, full cooperation was possible through a social norm of decentralized enforcement, without using tokens. ...

Our research investigates the effects of residential energy efficiency audit programs on subsequent household electricity consumption. Here there is a onetime interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. Our research objective is to determine whether and to what extent the surveys lead to behavioral changes. We then examine how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. The main evaluation problem here is survey participants' self-selection, which we address econometrically via several non-parametric estimators involving kernel-based propensity-score matching. In the first method we use difference-indifferences (DID) estimation. Our second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. Our evidence is that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by about 7%, on average compared to customers who had not yet participated in the survey. Considering the total number of high-usage households participating in the survey in 2009, we estimate that electricity consumption was reduced by an aggregate of 2 million kWh per year, which is approximately equal to the monthly consumption of 3500 typical households in California with an estimated 1527 metric tons less of carbon dioxide emissions. Because the energy audit program is inexpensive ($10-$20 per household) a key issue is that while the program is cost-effective, is it regressive? We find that as the

This paper uses panel data on individuals in the Czech Republic who we observe working in 1989 (during the communist period) and in 1996 (seven years into the transition) to analyze the wage changes associated with job mobility during this period of significant change in the structure of employment. Selectivity corrected estimates are presented for wage changes associated with different characteristics of job mobility, in terms of type of separation, changes in industry and movement between the old (state, privatized and public sector) and the new private sector.

Hiring and Firing Costs, Adverse Selection and Long-Term Unemployment * In this paper, we present a matching model with adverse selection that explains why flows into and out of unemployment are much lower in Europe compared to North America, while employment-to-employment flows are similar in the two continents. In the model, firms use discretion in terms of whom to fire and, thus, low quality workers are more likely to be dismissed than high quality workers. Moreover, as hiring and firing costs increase, firms find it more costly to hire a bad worker and, thus, they prefer to hire out of the pool of employed job seekers rather than out of the pool of the unemployed, who are more likely to turn out to be `lemons'. We use microdata for Spain and the U.S. and find that the ratio of the job finding probability of the unemployed to the job finding probability of employed job seekers was smaller in Spain than in the U.S.. Furthermore, using U.S. data, we find that the discrimination of the unemployed increased over the 1980's in those states that raised firing costs by introducing exceptions to the employment-at-will doctrine.

This paper proposes a way to allocate students to schools such that conciliates Pareto efficiency and stability. Taking as a starting point the recent reform proposed by the Boston School Committee, we propose a marginal modification to reach our objective redefine how students are prioritize. Our proposal is to allow schools to prioritize only a small set of students an then use a common priority order for the rest. Under this condition we propose a score based priority ranking that makes the output of the new Boston Mechanism Pareto ...

Differential and Distributional Effects of Energy Efficiency Surveys: Evidence from Electricity Consumption * Our research investigates the magnitude of the effect of residential energy efficiency audit programs on later household electricity consumption. These programs are designed to increase awareness of household energy consumption with personalized feedback that will eventually lead to behavioral changes. In this type of survey, there is only a one-time interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. The objective of this study is to determine whether and to what extent such surveys lead to behavioral changes. We argue that the perceived complexity of the survey feedback will determine whether the subsequent behavior is sustainable. Then we analyze how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. However, the main evaluation problem involving these surveys is self-selection bias. To correct for this bias, we propose two non-parametric estimators by using a kernel-based propensity score matching approach. In the first method, we use "difference-indifferences" (DID) estimations. The second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. The evidence suggest that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by 6.7%, compared with customers who had not yet participated in the survey. In addition, as the quantiles of the distribution increase, the effect of the program decreases.

This paper introduces τ-fairness as a compromise solution reconciling Pareto efficiency and equity in School Choice Problems. We show that, by considering a weak notion of equity that we refer to as λ-equity, it is possible to contribute positively to solve an open debate, originated by the efficiency-equity trade-off of the schooling problem. We also suggest a slight modification to some allocative procedures recently introduced in the United States to compute τ-fair allocations and provide support for this (possible) reformulation.

This paper proposes the notion of E-stability to conciliate Pareto efficiency and fairness. We propose the use of a centralized procedure, the Exchanging Places Mechanism. It endows students a position according with the Gale and Shapley students optimal stable matching as tentative allocation and allows the student to trade their positions. We show that the final allocation is E-stable, i.e. efficient, fair and immune to any justifiable objection that students can formulate.

Roth and Sotomayor (1990). Also see Gus…eld and Irving (1989) on the complementary work in operations research and computer science on algorithms regarding two-sided matching theory. 3 For surveys on market design of the US Federal Communications Commission (FCC) auctions (see http://wireless.fcc.gov/auctions/default.htm?job=auctions_home , retrieved on 10/16/2008), electricity markets (e.g., for California market see http://www.caiso.com, retrieved on 10/16/2008), and other aspects of matching markets and their links to game theory and more speci…cally to auction and matching theory

WHEN A COLLEGE GRADUATE decides to pursue a higher degree at a particular institution, one of the first challenges she faces is finding an apartment. Most institutions have on-campus housing available that is often subsidized and hence more appealing than its alternatives. Usually there are several types of on-campus housing and the attractiveness of each type changes from person to person. Therefore housing offices need to find 44mechanisms" to allocate available housing among the applicants who might have various preferences. In this paper we deal with this class of problems to which we refer as house allocation problems.2 Formally, there are n agents who collectively own n indivisible objects, say houses, and each agent has preferences over objects.3 An allocation is a matching of houses to agents and a matching mechanism is a systematic procedure to select a matching for each problem. A widely studied class of matching mechanisms is the class of simple serial dictatorships:...

Within the first 20 years of the market economy in Estonia, the public school market has been decentralized in Tallinn. Firstly, we describe how students are allocated to primary schools in a narrative, and secondly, in a formal mechanism design language. We indicate the closest equivalent algorithms from the matching markets design theory and conclude that the current system in Tallinn is a hybrid. The decentralized part of the market namely inter-district exam schools apply autonomous school proposing deferred acceptance; and the centralized part of the market intra-district regular schools apply school random serial dictatorship. Finally using data from Tallinn primary school matching, we show by an empirical evaluation of matching mechanisms. Since the currently the collected data does not reveal the students preference ordering we simulate some potential orderings for comparison.

We revisit the concept of fairness in the Student Placement framework. We declare an allocation as α-equitable if no agent can propose an alternative allocation that nobody else might argue to be inequitable. It turns out that α-equity is compatible with efficiency. Our analysis fills a gap in the literature by giving normative support to the allocations improving, in terms of efficiency, the Student Optimal Stable allocation.

We revisit the concept of fairness in the Student Placement framework. We declare an allocation as α-equitable if no agent can propose an alternative allocation that nobody else might argue to be inequitable. It turns out that α-equity is compatible with efficiency. Our analysis fills a gap in the literature by giving normative support to the allocations improving, in terms of efficiency, the Student Optimal Stable allocation.

CERS-IE Working Papers are circulated to promote discussion and provoque comments, they have not been peer-reviewed. Any references to discussion papers should clearly state that the paper is preliminary. Materials published in this series may be subject to further publication.

We consider data where we have individuals affiliated with at most one organisational unit and where the interest is in modelling changes to these affiliations over time. This could be the case of people working for organisations or people living in neighbourhoods. We draw on dynamic models for social networks to propose an actor-oriented model for how these affiliations change over time. These models specifically take into account constraints of the system and allow for the system
to be observed at discrete time-points. Constraints stem from the fact that for example  not  everybody  can  have  the  same  job  or  live  in  the  same  neighbourhood, something which induces dependencies among the decisions marginally. The model encompasses two modelling components: a model for determining the termination of an affiliation; and a discrete-choice model for determining the new affiliation. For
estimation we employ a Bayesian data-augmentation algorithm, that augments the observed states with unobserved sequences of transitions. We apply the proposed methods to a dataset of house-moves in Stockholm and illustrate how we may infer the mechanisms that sustain and perpetuate segregation on the housing market.

Our research investigates the magnitude of the effect of residential energy efficiency audit programs on later household electricity consumption. These programs are designed to increase awareness of household energy consumption with personalized feedback that will eventually lead to behavioral changes. In this type of survey, there is only a one-time interaction between households, which participate voluntarily, and the surveyors. The objective of this study is to determine whether and to what extent such surveys lead to behavioral changes. We argue that the perceived complexity of the survey feedback will determine whether the subsequent behavior is sustainable. Then we analyze how persistent the intervention is over time and whether the effects decay or intensify. However, the main evaluation problem involving these surveys is self-selection bias. To correct for this bias, we propose two non-parametric estimators by using a kernel-based propensity score matching approach. In the first method, we use “difference-in-differences” (DID) estimations. The second estimator is quantile DID, which produces estimates on distributions. The comparison group consists of households who were not yet participating in the survey but participated later. The evidence suggest that the customers who participated in the survey reduced their electricity consumption by 6.7%, compared with customers who had not yet participated in the survey. In addition, as the quantiles of the distribution increase, the effect of the program decreases.

This paper provides an 'escape route' from the efficiency-equity trade-off in the School Choice problem. We achieve our objective by presenting a weak notion of fairness, called τ-fairness, which is always non-empty.
Then, we propose the adoption of the Student Optimal Compensating Exchange Place rule, a procedure that assigns a τ-fair allocation to each problem. When students' preferences are restricted to satisfy the β-condition, the mechanism is strategy-proof.

This paper proposes a way to allocate students to schools such that conciliates Pareto efficiency and stability. Taking as a starting point the recent reform proposed by the Boston School Committee, we propose a marginal modification to reach our objective redefine how students are prioritize. Our proposal is to allow schools to prioritize only a small set of students an then use a common priority order for the rest.

Abstract Criteria for evaluating school choice mechanisms are first, whether truth% telling is sometimes punished and second, how effi cient the match is. With common knowledge preferences, Deferred Acceptance (DA) dominates the Boston mechanism by the first criterion and is ambiguously ranked by the second. Our laboratory experiments con% firm this.

This paper introduces τ-fairness as a compromise solution reconciling Pareto efficiency and equity in School Choice Problems. We show that, by considering a weak notion of equity that we refer to as λ-equity, it is possible to contribute positively to solve an open debate, originated by the efficiency-equity trade-off of the schooling problem. We also suggest a slight modification to some allocative procedures recently introduced in the United States to compute τ-fair allocations and provide support for this (possible) reformulation.

This paper introduces τ-fairness as a compromise solution reconciling Pareto efficiency and equity in School Choice Problems. We show that, by considering a weak notion of equity that we refer to as λ-equity, it is possible to contribute positively to solve an open debate, originated by the efficiency-equity trade-off of the schooling problem. We also suggest a slight modification to some allocative procedures recently introduced in the United States to compute τ-fair allocations and provide support for this (possible) reformulation.

This paper proposes a reform for school allocation procedures in order to help integration policies reach their objective. For this purpose, we suggest the use of a natural two-step mechanism. The (stable) first step is introduced as an adaptation of the deferred-acceptance algorithm designed by Gale and Shapley (1962), when students are divided into two groups. The (efficient) second step captures the idea of exchanging places inherent to Gale's Top Trading Cycle. This latter step could be useful for Municipal School Boards when implementing some integration policies.