Undergraduate Course Allocation through Competitive Markets

Abstract

We consider the problem of allocating courses to students in post-secondary institutions. We propose a mechanism that assigns course seats based on student preferences and respects course priorities. This mechanism uses fake money and competitive equilibrium to allocate courses without transfers and has desirable theoretical properties in terms of stability, efficiency, fairness, and strategy-proofness. In simulations drawing from real-world university data, we demonstrate that its outcomes improve student mean utility and allocation fairness over the outcomes of several celebrated mechanisms currently used in practice. (joint with Daniel Kornbluth). (joint with Daniel Kornbluth).