Bidding for Army Career Specialties: Improving the ROTC Branching Mechanism
针对美国陆军后备军官训练团（ROTC）毕业生留任率低的问题，本文提出一种结合市场机制与优先分配机制的混合设计，以改进现有匹配机制，解决陆军已识别的政策问题。
Motivated by the low retention rates of US Military Academy and Reserve Officer Training Corps graduates, the Army recently introduced incentives programs in which cadets could bid 3 years of additional service obligation to obtain higher priority for their desired branches. The full potential of this incentives program is not utilized because of the ROTC's deficient matching mechanism. I propose a design that eliminates these shortcomings and mitigates several policy problems the Army has identified. In contrast to the ROTC mechanism, my design utilizes market principles more extensively, and it is a hybrid between a market mechanism and a priority-based allocation mechanism.