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Unlocking Legal Efficiency Gains in School Switch Programs

Andersson, Tommy LU ; Lager, Nils and Kessel, Dany (2026) In Working Papers
Abstract
We study school switches in which students who have already been assigned seats request
reassignment. Unlike in regular school choice, stability need not be legally binding in such
programs, since students’ priority-based claims have already been satisfied upstream. Effi-
ciency then naturally becomes the primary design objective. To quantify the potential legal
efficiency gains, we compare Deferred Acceptance (DA) with Top Trading Cycles (TTC) and
an efficiency-adjusted DA (EADAM) using Swedish data. TTC and EADAM triple switch-
ing rates compared to DA. This difference is driven by the absence of slack in effective
capacity and shrinks rapidly when introducing additional seats.
Please use this url to cite or link to this publication:
author
; and
organization
publishing date
type
Working paper/Preprint
publication status
published
subject
keywords
School switch, Efficiency, Stability, Matching algorithms, Capacity slack., C78, D47, D78
in
Working Papers
issue
2026:4
pages
8 pages
language
English
LU publication?
yes
id
afb14c72-42b9-48b5-9e6e-42d63f1188be
date added to LUP
2026-05-28 13:35:36
date last changed
2026-05-28 13:35:36
@misc{afb14c72-42b9-48b5-9e6e-42d63f1188be,
  abstract     = {{We study school switches in which students who have already been assigned seats request<br/>reassignment. Unlike in regular school choice, stability need not be legally binding in such<br/>programs, since students’ priority-based claims have already been satisfied upstream. Effi-<br/>ciency then naturally becomes the primary design objective. To quantify the potential legal<br/>efficiency gains, we compare Deferred Acceptance (DA) with Top Trading Cycles (TTC) and<br/>an efficiency-adjusted DA (EADAM) using Swedish data. TTC and EADAM triple switch-<br/>ing rates compared to DA. This difference is driven by the absence of slack in effective<br/>capacity and shrinks rapidly when introducing additional seats.}},
  author       = {{Andersson, Tommy and Lager, Nils and Kessel, Dany}},
  keywords     = {{School switch; Efficiency; Stability; Matching algorithms; Capacity slack.; C78; D47; D78}},
  language     = {{eng}},
  month        = {{05}},
  note         = {{Working Paper}},
  number       = {{2026:4}},
  series       = {{Working Papers}},
  title        = {{Unlocking Legal Efficiency Gains in School Switch Programs}},
  url          = {{https://lup.lub.lu.se/search/files/251348670/WP26_4.pdf}},
  year         = {{2026}},
}