College matching mechanisms and matching stability: Evidence from a natural experiment in China

Abstract

Matching mechanisms play a crucial role in the college admissions process, which in turn influence education and labor market outcomes. We exploit geographical and temporal variation in Chinese college admissions reform to provide new empirical evidence on how matching mechanisms affect matching stability. Consistent with theoretical findings by Chen and Kesten (2017), we show that in changing from the Immediate Acceptance (IA) mechanism to the Chinese parallel mechanism, a hybrid of IA and the Deferred Acceptance mechanisms, matching stability improved, as proxied by the level of stratification precision. This effect is stronger for provinces with wider first parallel choice bands in a nonlinear way.