Preserving acquired rights in the re-placement of medical residents in Türkiye
Review of Economic Design, cilt.30, sa.2, ss.203-237, 2026 (SSCI, Scopus)
- Yayın Türü: Makale / Tam Makale
- Cilt numarası: 30 Sayı: 2
- Basım Tarihi: 2026
- Doi Numarası: 10.1007/s10058-025-00392-2
- Dergi Adı: Review of Economic Design
- Derginin Tarandığı İndeksler: Social Sciences Citation Index (SSCI), Scopus, IBZ Online, ABI/INFORM, Business Source Elite, Business Source Premier, EconLit, zbMATH
- Sayfa Sayıları: ss.203-237
- Anahtar Kelimeler: Acquired rights, Capacity constraints, Fairness, Many-to-one matching
- TED Üniversitesi Adresli: Evet
Özet
We analyze the re-placement mechanism implemented in Türkiye for reassigning doctors to residency programs after scoring errors were realized. By law, initial placements based on faulty scores are acquired rights, prohibiting re-placement to less favorable programs. This setup requires balancing fairness for doctors with improved rankings, preserving acquired rights, and adhering to program capacities. Our analysis focuses on the two-step serial dictatorship mechanism implemented by the Center for Assessment, Selection, and Placement (CASP) to address this problem. We show that the CASP mechanism violates fairness, such that higher-scoring doctors may justifiably envy the assignments of lower-scoring peers. Yet, when doctors adopt a weakly dominant strategy and truncate preferences below their initial placements, a more lenient notion of q-fairness is satisfied. Additionally, we show how manipulation incentives under the CASP mechanism lead to excessive deviations from target capacities. We propose the Acquired Rights Adjusted Serial Dictatorship (AR-SD) mechanism to prevent strategic manipulation and minimize deviations. Furthermore, we describe simple modifications to the CASP mechanism that render it equivalent to AR-SD. Finally, simulations using total deviations as a metric show that AR-SD consistently achieves fewer deviations than the CASP mechanism.