Matching Strategies of Heterogeneous Agents under Incomplete Information in a University Clearinghouse

We analyze the actual behavior of agents in a matching mechanism, using data from a clearinghouse at the Faculty of Business Administration and Economics at a German university, where a variant of the Boston mechanism is used. We supplement this data with data generated in a survey among the students who participated in the clearinghouse. We find that under the current mechanism over 74% of students act strategically by misrepresenting at least one of their preferences. Nevertheless, not all students are able to improve their outcome by doing so. We show that this is mainly due to the incomplete information of students and naiveté. Sophisticated students actually reach significantly better outcomes than naive students. Thus, we find evidence that naive students are exploited by sophisticated students in an incomplete information setting.