A comparison study on responsiveness of three mechanisms to affirmative action in school choice

This note provides a comparison study on responsiveness of three popular mechanisms to affirmative action in school choice. When the exogenous school choice environment gives full priority to the minority, the student-proposing deferred acceptance (DA) mechanism is responsive to both the quota-based and reserve-based affirmative action policies. In comparison with DA mechanism, the top trading cycles (TTC) mechanism is responsive to neither the quota-based nor the reserve-based affirmative action even when the exogenous school choice environment gives full priority to the minority. When each minority student has higher priority than each majority student at each school, the TTC mechanism is responsive to the quota-based affirmative action. However, under the environment as above, the Boston mechanism is not responsive to the quota-based affirmative action.