Abstract
I model a teacher transfer program in South Korea as a matching-with-contracts problem. The current (non-centralized) system allows a teacher wishing to make an inter-state transfer to submit, at most, one application and will approve only a one-to-one exchange. Consequently, not only is this current system unstable and inefficient, but it also does not adequately reflect the teachers’ preferences. In contrast, the centralized mechanism I propose fully represents teachers’ preferences and is less wasteful. One key requirement of a teacher transfer program is that it must protect the rights of currently existing teachers who wish to transfer from their current positions, perhaps to satisfy familial needs, for only a short period of time. However, as I demonstrate, no stable mechanism exists that guarantee protection for the rights of such teachers to the positions they currently occupy. To solve this problem, I introduce a novel concept called a claim contract. A claim contract, in a matching-with-contracts model, protects current teachers by removing contracts that do not match the specified duration set by these teachers from the set of potential matches. In this paper, I propose a new mechanism, based on a claim contract, that is strategy-proof and approximates stable matching.
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Notes
South Korea consists of seventeen states, which contain provinces and metropolitan cities. In this study, each independent administrative region is defined as a “state.”
For elementary education, applicants who graduated with a degree in elementary education in the state in which they are undergoing screening receive additional points on their exams.
Even though it is not common, new schools in recently developed cities can create new positions as well.
For example, if a teacher has less than three years of experience or has a criminal record, she may not be eligible for a transfer.
This is based on “Inter State Exchange Plan” by Sejong City Office of Education, 2019. Other states have similar structures.
Korea has 6 degrees of disabled status, with 1 being the most severe.
In a separate work, Jinyong Jeong (2020) studied this problem in the context of an efficiency notion, analyzing the problem as a special case of housing exchange problem.
A permanent transfer should be understood as a permanent move to a given state, not to a given position. The current practice is that the positions rotate every three to five years within the state. However, this rotation system is beyond the scope of this paper.
This restriction reflects the current system under which new teachers can only be assigned in the state in which he or she took the teachers examination.
In a general setting, it can be referred to as protecting property rights.
As a result, the claim contract will be chosen, and the contract held by \(s^{i_{Ek}}\) may be rejected in this step, if it is a long-term contract.
The removed one is not “rejected” yet, and so it can be used in a later offer.
This happens when there is a teacher who finds both short-term and long-term contracts acceptable, and at least one short-term contract is preferred to some long-term contracts. Given that the main motivation for the transfer is family needs, teachers exhibiting such a preference will not be common.
If a short-term contract is rejected, then it is rejected because of another short-term contract, so that there is no way to manipulate it.
The term does not need to be a \(t^{+}\).
It is not yet known whether the cumulative offer with claim contract mechanism is the least wasteful mechanism among all the strategy-proof and existing-teacher-protecting mechanisms.
They are not stable with respect to the preferences and priorities. Note that stability is not compatible with protecting teachers.
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Jeong, J. Matching with property rights: an application to Korean teacher transfer program. Rev Econ Design 25, 139–156 (2021). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00245-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10058-021-00245-8