The Heterogeneous Effect of Affirmative Action on Performance / Anat Bracha, Alma Cohen, Lynn Conell-Price.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Bracha, Anat.

Contributor:

National Bureau of Economic Research.

Cohen, Alma.

Conell-Price, Lynn.

Series:

Working Paper Series (National Bureau of Economic Research) no. w25322.

NBER working paper series no. w25322

Language:

English

Physical Description:

1 online resource: illustrations (black and white);

Place of Publication:

Cambridge, Mass. National Bureau of Economic Research 2018.

Summary:

This paper experimentally investigates the effect of gender-based affirmative action (AA) on performance in the lab, focusing on a tournament environment. The tournament is based on GRE math questions commonly used in graduate school admission, and at which women are known to perform worse on average than men. We find heterogeneous effect of AA on female participants: AA lowers the performance of high-ability women and increases the performance of low-ability women. Our results are consistent with two possible mechanisms--one is that AA changes incentives differentially for low- and high-ability women, and the second is that AA triggers stereotype threat.

Notes:

Print version record

December 2018.