Whom to hire, promote, admit into elite universities, elect, or issue government contracts to are all determined in a tournament-like (winner-take-all) structure. This paper constructs a simple model of pair-wise tournament competition to investigate affirmative action in these markets. We consider two forms of affirmative action: group-sighted, where employers are allowed to use group identity...

This article identifies the key issues involved in the debate about affirmative action. The June 2003 Supreme Court decisions allowing consideration of race to ensure that there is a "critical mass" of African American, Latino/Latina, and Native American applicants to higher education are addressed. Social psychologists have identified key myths and provided clarifications about the need for an...

This paper studies how affirmative action exemptions in public procurement can improve efficiency and government expenditures without harming disadvantaged business enterprise (DBE) utilization, particularly when DBEs are subject to capacity constraints. I examine a unique program employed by the Iowa Department of Transportation, where prior to 2013 prime contractors were allowed an exemption ...

Affirmative action is based on a set of 30-year-old premises that badly need revising. White males are no longer dominant at every level of the corporation (statistically, they are merely the largest of many minorities), while decades of attack have noticeably weakened racial and gender prejudices. At the intake level, affirmative action quite effectively sets the stage for a workplace that is ...

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This Article defends racial integration as a central goal of race-based affirmative action. Racial integration of mainstream institutions is necessary both to dismantle the current barriers to opportunity suffered by disadvantaged racial groups, and to create a democratic civil society. Integration, conceived as a forward-looking remedy for de facto racial segregation and discrimination, makes ...

We investigate the effect of affirmative action policies in a statistical discrimination model with two stages. A group of workers face discrimination in both hiring and promotion decisions of the firm, and the regulator is free to intervene in both stages. We show that there are affirmative action policies which can eliminate negative employer beliefs by increasing educational investment in th...

The Federal Highway Administration (FHWA) mandates the use of affirmative action for minorityand women-owned firms by states in awarding federally funded road construction projects. In this paper, I document the variation of affirmative action across states over the history of the FHWA program, and I provide evidence regarding the effectiveness of affirmative action at increasing purchases from...

This chapter surveys the theoretical literature on statistical discrimination and affirmative action. This literature suggests different explanations for the existence and persistence of group inequality. This survey highlights such differences and describes in these contexts the effects of color-sighted and color-blind affirmative action policies, and the efficiency implications of discriminat...

impact of affirmative action on women, none have focused on women at the highest rungs on the career ladder. Thus, we still do not know whether being the beneficiary of affirmative action early in their careers ultimately helps women to attain top leadership positions; though as noted, it does appear to have helped open doors to positions along the way. Affirmative action and antidiscrimination...