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Canals, C., Goles, E., Mascareno, A., Rica, S., & Ruz, G. A. (2018). School Choice in a Market Environment: Individual versus Social Expectations. Complexity, 3793095, 11 pp.
Abstract: School choice is a key factor connecting personal preferences (beliefs, desires, and needs) and school offer in education markets. While it is assumed that preferences are highly individualistic forms of expectations by means of which parents select schools satisfying their internal moral standards, this paper argues that a better matching between parental preferences and school offer is achieved when individuals take into account their relevant network vicinity, thereby constructing social expectations regarding school choice. We develop two related models (individual expectations and social expectations) and prove that they are driven by a Lyapunov function, obtaining that both models converge to fixed points. Also, we assess their performance by conducting computational simulations. While the individual expectations model shows a probabilistic transition and a critical threshold below which preferences concentrate in a few schools and a significant amount of students is left unattended by the school offer, the social expectations model presents a smooth dynamics in which most of the schools have students all the time and no students are left out. We discuss our results considering key topics of the empirical research on school choice in educational market environments and conclude that social expectations contribute to improve information and lead to a better matching between school offer and parental preferences.
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Canals, C., Maroulis, S., Canessa, E., Chaigneau, S., & Mizala, A. (2022). Mechanisms Underlying Choice-Set Formation: The Case of School Choice in Chile. Soc. Sci. Comput. Rev., Early Access.
Abstract: Many decisions involve selecting among many more options than an individual can effectively examine and consider. Therefore, people usually consider smaller and different “choice sets” as viable options. To better understand the processes affecting choice-set formation, we developed a computational model of how households become aware of potential choices in a context for which understanding household decision-making has important public policy implications: market-based reforms in education. In the model, households learn about the schools to which they can send their children through three mechanisms: find out about geographically proximate schools, access to publicly available information, and information gathered from interactions with other households. We calibrated the model using data from four cities in Chile, where students are not required to attend their neighborhood school. We then used the model to conduct hypothetical computational experiments that assessed how each mechanism impacted the sets of schools known to households before they make their choice (their “awareness set”). We found that the inclusion of a social interaction mechanism was crucial for producing simulated awareness sets that matched the awareness sets provided in a survey conducted by the Chilean Ministry of Education. We also found that the social interaction mechanism played the largest role in determining the quality and price range of the choices available in households’ awareness sets. Our findings highlight the importance of social interactions in a stage of decision-making before the direct impact of other individuals is typically made explicit. Moreover, it validates an approach that can be used in future models where understanding how decision-makers become aware of their options may be as important as the way they choose among them.
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