Ec Profs Study House Lottery

Two faculty members in the economics department will use the freshman housing lottery to study how rooming group decisions are made and the strategies involved in choosing houses.

Assistant Professors of Economics Susan M. Collins '80 and Kala Krishna handed out detailed questionnaires to freshmen earlier this week when they picked their rooming group forms. In addition, they will distribute questionnaires later this month.

Collins said she and Krishna will analyze "how individual preferences are combined to form group preferences," and "how individuals and groups plot their strategies in competitive situations."

"This is a true decision-making environment, an issue that people care about," Collins said of the housing choice process. The two will compare data from the freshmen and sophomores and the two upper classes to see how decision-making processes changed, Collins said. Two years ago, the College decided to tell freshmen what their numbers before they specified their housing choices.

"The lottery provides a rare opportunity [for this analysis] because large changes in the environment are rare, except in experimental situations," said the questionnaire for freshmen.

The survey, which is independent from theCollege and the economics department, "will bekept totally anonymous and will have no effect onthe housing lottery," Collins said. The questionsask freshmen how they chose rooming groups and,houses.

Krishna said that the new lottery systempresents "a nice problem in game theory," whichrests on the premise that "people will maximizewhatever objective function they have."

"Suppose you knew you had a low number in thelottery, you'd be more likely to put down yourtrue choices but if you had a high number, you'd bemore likely to lie," Krishna said