Does competition affect evolutionary dynamics? Evidence from a collegiate university

Abstract

This article shows that competition is inversely related to the strength of evolutionary dynamics using a collegiate university's admission statistics during the period 2004–2009. Specifically, estimated coefficients of the replicator dynamic equation is inversely related to the subject's applications-to-offers ratio. This suggests that competition favours a choice of strategies that is serially independent of the previous round's pay-offs.

Keywords:

• evolutionary dynamics
• serial independence
• competitive pressures
• college admissions

JEL Classification:

• C70
• C90

Notes

¹ Colleges in Cambridge are committed to nondiscrimination and equal opportunity, so it is hard to think of any reason why observed applicant characteristics should matter.

² Oxford University operates a similar College-based admissions system; however, Oxford University has not published disaggregated application statistics for each subject and College combination, which renders the information environment unsuitable for the present study.

³ Of the total applications received during the sample period, 12.9% were originally open applications.

⁴ The information on the number of open applications and their assignments to the Colleges were obtained from the University's central administration by request under the Freedom of Information Act 2000.

⁵ I excluded 4-year Classics because the programme is relatively small compared to the regular 3-year Classics, and also Linguistic because the programme started only in 2009.

⁶ The selection of covariates is based on the author's informal conversation with Admissions Tutors at Cambridge.

⁷ The results are very similar to FE specifications where an AR(1) error correction model is estimated.