IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/nbr/nberwo/20407.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes

Author

Listed:
  • Charles M. Becker
  • Cecilia Elena Rouse
  • Mingyu Chen

Abstract

In the 1970s, the American Economic Association (AEA) was one of several professional associations to launch a summer program with the goal of increasing racial and ethnic diversity in its profession. In this paper we estimate the effectiveness of the AEA's program which, to the best of our knowledge, is the first to rigorously study such a summer program. Using a comparison group consisting of those who applied to, but did not attend, the program and controlling for an array of background characteristics, we find that program participants were over 40 percentage points more likely to apply to and attend a PhD program in economics, 26 percentage points more likely to complete a PhD, and about 15 percentage points more likely to ever work in an economics-related academic job. Using our estimates, we calculate that the program may directly account for 17-21 percent of the PhDs awarded to minorities in economics over the past 20 years.

Suggested Citation

  • Charles M. Becker & Cecilia Elena Rouse & Mingyu Chen, 2014. "Can a Summer Make a Difference? The Impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on Minority Student Outcomes," NBER Working Papers 20407, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  • Handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20407
    Note: ED LS
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.nber.org/papers/w20407.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Moro, Andrea & Norman, Peter, 2003. "Affirmative action in a competitive economy," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 87(3-4), pages 567-594, March.
    2. Wayne A. Grove & Donald H. Dutkowsky & Andrew Grodner, 2007. "Survive Then Thrive: Determinants Of Success In The Economics Ph.D. Program," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 45(4), pages 864-871, October.
    3. Hale, Galina & Regev, Tali, 2014. "Gender ratios at top PhD programs in economics," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 41(C), pages 55-70.
    4. Andrew Schotter & Keith Weigelt, 1992. "Asymmetric Tournaments, Equal Opportunity Laws, and Affirmative Action: Some Experimental Results," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 511-539.
    5. Ben Backes, 2012. "Do Affirmative Action Bans Lower Minority College Enrollment and Attainment?: Evidence from Statewide Bans," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(2), pages 435-455.
    6. Robert W. Fairlie & Florian Hoffmann & Philip Oreopoulos, 2014. "A Community College Instructor Like Me: Race and Ethnicity Interactions in the Classroom," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(8), pages 2567-2591, August.
    7. Muriel Niederle & Carmit Segal & Lise Vesterlund, 2013. "How Costly Is Diversity? Affirmative Action in Light of Gender Differences in Competitiveness," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, May.
    8. Donna K. Ginther & Shulamit Kahn, 2004. "Women in Economics: Moving Up or Falling Off the Academic Career Ladder?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 18(3), pages 193-214, Summer.
    9. Wayne A. Grove & Stephen Wu, 2007. "The Search for Economics Talent: Doctoral Completion and Research Productivity," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 97(2), pages 506-511, May.
    10. Peter Hinrichs, 2012. "The Effects of Affirmative Action Bans on College Enrollment, Educational Attainment, and the Demographic Composition of Universities," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 94(3), pages 712-722, August.
    11. Michael A. Leeds, 1992. "Who Benefits from Affirmative Action? The Case of the AEA Summer Minority Program 1986-1990," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 6(2), pages 149-156, Spring.
    12. Cecilia Rouse, 2013. "Report: Committee on the Status of Minority Groups in the Economics Profession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 756-766, May.
    13. Peter Arcidiacono, 2005. "Affirmative Action in Higher Education: How Do Admission and Financial Aid Rules Affect Future Earnings?," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 73(5), pages 1477-1524, September.
    14. Gregory N. Price, 2005. "The Causal Effects of Participation in the American Economic Association Summer Minority Program," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 72(1), pages 78-97, July.
    15. Wendy A. Stock & T. Aldrich Finegan & John J. Siegfried, 2006. "Attrition in Economics Ph.D. Programs," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 96(2), pages 458-466, May.
    16. Kim-Sau Chung, 2000. "Role Models and Arguments for Affirmative Action," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(3), pages 640-648, June.
    17. Jimmy Chan & Erik Eyster, 2003. "Does Banning Affirmative Action Lower College Student Quality?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 93(3), pages 858-872, June.
    18. Francine D. Blau & Janet M. Currie & Rachel T. A. Croson & Donna K. Ginther, 2010. "Can Mentoring Help Female Assistant Professors? Interim Results from a Randomized Trial," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 100(2), pages 348-352, May.
    19. Long, M.C.Mark C., 2004. "College applications and the effect of affirmative action," Journal of Econometrics, Elsevier, vol. 121(1-2), pages 319-342.
    20. Dickson, Lisa M., 2006. "Does ending affirmative action in college admissions lower the percent of minority students applying to college?," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 25(1), pages 109-119, February.
    21. Marjorie B. McElroy, 2013. "Report: Committee on the Status of Women in the Economics Profession," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 103(3), pages 744-755, May.
    22. Shulamit B. Kahn, 1995. "Women in the Economics Profession," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 9(4), pages 193-206, Fall.
    23. Susan M. Collins, 2000. "Minority Groups in the Economics Profession," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 133-148, Spring.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Gordanier, John & Hauk, William & Sankaran, Chandini, 2019. "Early intervention in college classes and improved student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 72(C), pages 23-29.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Peter Arcidiacono & Michael Lovenheim, 2016. "Affirmative Action and the Quality-Fit Trade-Off," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 54(1), pages 3-51, March.
    2. Hinrichs, Peter, 2014. "Affirmative action bans and college graduation rates," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 43-52.
    3. Zachary Bleemer, 2022. "Affirmative Action, Mismatch, and Economic Mobility after California’s Proposition 209," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 137(1), pages 115-160.
    4. Yagan, Danny, 2016. "Supply vs. demand under an affirmative action ban: Estimates from UC law schools," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 137(C), pages 38-50.
    5. Fernanda Estevan & Thomas Gall & Louis-Philippe Morin, 2019. "Redistribution Without Distortion: Evidence from an Affirmative Action Programme at a Large Brazilian University," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 129(619), pages 1182-1220.
    6. Chen, Jihui Susan & Liu, Qihong & Billger, Sherrilyn M., 2012. "Where Do New Ph.D. Economists Go? Evidence from Recent Initial Job Placements," IZA Discussion Papers 6990, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    8. David Welsch, 2012. "Affirmative Action in College Admission Decisions and the Distribution of Human Capital," Working Papers 12-02, UW-Whitewater, Department of Economics.
    9. Jihui Chen & Qihong Liu & Myongjin Kim, 2022. "Gender gap in tenure and promotion: Evidence from the economics Ph.D. class of 2008," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 88(4), pages 1277-1312, April.
    10. Kate Antonovics & Ben Backes, 2013. "Were Minority Students Discouraged from Applying to University of California Campuses after the Affirmative Action Ban?," Education Finance and Policy, MIT Press, vol. 8(2), pages 208-250, April.
    11. Juliana Silva-Goncalves & Uwe Dulleck & Anita Lee Hong & Markus Schaffner & Stephen Whyte, 2016. "Affirmative action and effort choice: An experimental investigation," WIDER Working Paper Series wp-2016-54, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    12. Jeffrey A. Flory & Andreas Leibbrandt & Christina Rott & Olga Stoddard, 2021. "Increasing Workplace Diversity: Evidence from a Recruiting Experiment at a Fortune 500 Company," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 56(1), pages 73-92.
    13. Peter Hinrichs, 2020. "Affirmative Action and Racial Segregation," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 63(2), pages 239-267.
    14. Dario Cestau & Dennis Epple & Holger Sieg, 2017. "Admitting Students to Selective Education Programs: Merit, Profiling, and Affirmative Action," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 125(3), pages 761-797.
    15. Page, Lindsay C. & Scott-Clayton, Judith, 2016. "Improving college access in the United States: Barriers and policy responses," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(C), pages 4-22.
    16. Francis-Tan, Andrew & Tannuri-Pianto, Maria, 2018. "Black Movement: Using discontinuities in admissions to study the effects of college quality and affirmative action," Journal of Development Economics, Elsevier, vol. 135(C), pages 97-116.
    17. Juliana Silva-Goncalves & Uwe Dulleck & Anita Hong & Markus Schaffner & Stephen Whyte, 2016. "Affirmative action and effort choice An experimental investigation," WIDER Working Paper Series 054, World Institute for Development Economic Research (UNU-WIDER).
    18. Francisca Antman & Brian Duncan, 2015. "Incentives to Identify: Racial Identity in the Age of Affirmative Action," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 97(3), pages 710-713, July.
    19. Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2018. "Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire? Evidence From A Natural Field Experiment On Job-Entry Decisions," NBER Working Papers 25035, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    20. Sabyasachi Das & Abhiroop Mukhopadhyay & Rajas Saroy, 2018. "Does Affirmative Action in Politics Hinder Performance? Evidence from India," Working Papers 1007, Ashoka University, Department of Economics.

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I24 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Education and Inequality
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:nbr:nberwo:20407. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/nberrus.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.