Abstract The study investigates a tension between affirmative action scholars who hypothesize that bans would increase underrepresented minority students’ STEM college completions and have empirically estimated declines. It also questions results find no existence of penalty (compared to non-STEM) caused by finds is likely, but varies from very modest effect (using the Department Homeland Secur...

This paper studies the aggregate economic effects of diversity policies such as affirmative action in college admission. If agents are constrained in the side payments they can make, the free market allocation displays excessive segregation relative to the first-best. Affirmative action policies can restore diversity within colleges but also affect incentives to invest in pre-college scholastic...

The South African labour market is characterised by a diversity of ethnic and cultural groups. The public sector is experiencing pressure from social, economic, political and legislative circles to make the workplace more representative of the population. This study investigated the affirmative action process in a national public sector department in terms of its employees' perceptions of that ...

We develop a model of affirmative action as a large contest wherein students with heterogeneous underlying abilities compete for seats at vertically differentiated colleges that use color-sighted affirmative action policies to evaluate applicants. Students make costly human capital investments before applying, and these investments are both intrinsically productive and serve as signals of abili...