Experimental Economics Seminar - Dorothea Kubler (WZB Berlin Social Science Center)

Title: "How to avoid black markets for appointments at public offices“ (with Rustamdjan Hakimov, Philipp Heller and Morimitsu Kurino).

Abstract: Allocating appointment slots is presented as a new application for market design. We consider a setting inspired by the booking of appointment slots to obtain a visa at German consulates. The current online booking system is based on the principle of first-come first-served which allows scalpers to enter the market and sell slots to appointment seekers ('immediate system'). We propose an alternative system and test it experimentally. This system collects applications for slots for a certain time period and then randomly allocates slots to all applicants ('deferred system'). We investigate the two systems under conditions of low and high demand for slots. As predicted, scalpers profitably book and sell slots under the immediate system with high demand, but they do not make profits in the deferred system under both demand conditions.