Valuing Identity: The Simple Economics of Affirmative Action Policies∗
نویسنده
چکیده
Affirmative action policies are practiced around the world. This paper explores the welfare economics of such policies. A model is proposed where heterogeneous agents, distinguished by skill level and social identity, compete for access to scarce positions. The problem of designing an efficient policy to raise the success rate in this competition of a disadvantaged identity group is considered. We show that: (i) when agent identity is fully visible and contractible (sightedness), efficient policy grants preferred access to positions, but offers no direct assistance for acquiring skills; and, (ii) when identity is not contractible (blindness), efficient policy lowers productivity requirements across the board, randomly rations access to positions and, under plausible conditions, entails a universal skills subsidy. ∗We are grateful to Pierre-Andre Chiappori, Edward Glaeser, Jerry Green, Bart Lipman, Bernard Salanie, and two anonymous referees for helpful comments and suggestions. We also thank seminar participants at numerous universities. Fryer is at the Department of Economics, Harvard University, and NBER, 1875 Cambridge Street, Cambridge MA 02138 (e-mail: [email protected]); Loury is at the Department of Economics, Brown University, 64 Waterman Street, Providence RI 02912 (e-mail:[email protected]). Financial support is gratefully acknowledged from the Andrew W. Mellon Foundation and the Carnegie Corporation. Fryer thanks the DuBois Institute for African and African-American Research and the Institute of Quantitative Social Science for generous support.
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تاریخ انتشار 2007