Top of the Batch: Interviews and the Match
Abstract
Most doctors in the National Resident Matching Program (NRMP) match with one of their most preferred internship programs. However, surveys indicate doctors' preferences are similar, suggesting a puzzle: how can so many doctors match with their top choices when positions are scarce? We provide one possible explanation. We show that the patterns in the NRMP data may be an artifact of the interview process that precedes the match. Our study highlights the importance of understanding market interactions occurring before and after a matching clearinghouse. It casts doubts on analyses of clearinghouses that take reported preferences at face value.
Additional Information
© 2022 American Economic Association. Dirk Bergemann was coeditor for this article. Echenique gratefully acknowledges the support of NSF SES-1558757 and CNS-1518941. Yariv gratefully acknowledges the support of NSF grant SES-1629613. Computations presented here were supported by resources provided by the University of Pittsburgh Center for Research Computing and the Caltech High Performance Cluster (partially supported by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation). Detailed comments from SangMok Lee, Juan Pereyra, the coeditor, and four anonymous reviewers were very helpful in revising and improving the paper. A suggestion from SangMok Lee allowed us to generalize our main result. Code and simulations are provided at Echenique et al. (2021).Attached Files
Published - aeri.20200800.pdf
Submitted - 2002.05323.pdf
Supplemental Material - 16872.pdf
Supplemental Material - 16873.zip
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Additional details
- Eprint ID
- 108305
- Resolver ID
- CaltechAUTHORS:20210304-084112774
- SES-1558757
- NSF
- CNS-1518941
- NSF
- SES-1629613
- NSF
- Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation
- Created
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2021-03-04Created from EPrint's datestamp field
- Updated
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2022-07-14Created from EPrint's last_modified field