Public school choice has evolved rapidly in the past two decades, as districts roll out new magnet, dual-language, and themed programs to broaden educational opportunity. We use newly collected national data to document that opt-in (voluntary) systems: (i) are the modal design; (ii) are harder...

We study a principal who allocates a good to agents with private, independently distributed values through an optimal mechanism. The principal can strategically shape these value distributions by modifying the good's features, which affect agents' valuations. Our analysis reveals that optimal...

In a strategy-proof mechanism, implementation theory mostly assumes that each agent is rational in the sense that the agent reveals its true preference to induce its most preferred outcome. This assumption is sufficient to guarantee that the agent seeks such an outcome, but not necessary because...