arXiv subjects

Isa E. Hafalir

Publications and source records attributed to Isa E. Hafalir.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2025

Market Design with Distributional Objectives

We provide optimal solutions to an institution that has distributional objectives when choosing from a set of applications based on merit (or priority). For example, in college admissions, administrators may want to admit a diverse class in addition to choosing students with the highest qualifications. We provide a family of choice rules that maximize merit subject to attaining a level of the distributional objective. We study the desirable properties of choice rules in this family and use them to find all subsets of applications on the Pareto frontier of the distributional objective and merit. In addition, we provide two novel characterizations of matroids.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2024

Rationalizing Path-Independent Choice Rules

Path independence is arguably one of the most important choice rule properties in economic theory. We show that a choice rule is path independent if and only if it is rationalizable by a utility function satisfying ordinal concavity, a concept closely related to concavity notions in discrete mathematics. We also provide a rationalization result for choice rules that satisfy path independence and the law of aggregate demand.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2023

Efficient Market Design with Distributional Objectives

Given an initial matching and a policy objective on the distribution of agent types to institutions, we study the existence of a mechanism that weakly improves the distributional objective and satisfies constrained efficiency, individual rationality, and strategy-proofness. We show that such a mechanism need not exist in general. We introduce a new notion of discrete concavity, which we call pseudo M$^{\natural}$-concavity, and construct a mechanism with the desirable properties when the distributional objective satisfies this notion. We provide several practically relevant distributional objectives that are pseudo M$^{\natural}$-concave.

econ.TH↗

arXiv2019

Interdistrict School Choice: A Theory of Student Assignment

Interdistrict school choice programs-where a student can be assigned to a school outside of her district-are widespread in the US, yet the market-design literature has not considered such programs. We introduce a model of interdistrict school choice and present two mechanisms that produce stable or efficient assignments. We consider three categories of policy goals on assignments and identify when the mechanisms can achieve them. By introducing a novel framework of interdistrict school choice, we provide a new avenue of research in market design.

econ.TH↗