IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/uww/wpaper/12-02.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Affirmative Action in College Admission Decisions and the Distribution of Human Capital

Author

Listed:
  • David Welsch

    (Department of Economics, University of Wisconsin - Whitewater)

Abstract

This paper presents a model consisting of a large number of students who differ by race and by the stock of human capital of their parents. Students choose effort levels in high school and college. College attendance is dependent on the student’s decision to attend college and the college’s decision to accept the student. Colleges in this paper enact admission policies that are not colorblind. The computational experiments reveal that under affirmative action, some minority students who were already attending college without affirmative action acquire less human capital because affirmative action reduces their incentive to exert effort in high school.

Suggested Citation

  • David Welsch, 2012. "Affirmative Action in College Admission Decisions and the Distribution of Human Capital," Working Papers 12-02, UW-Whitewater, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:uww:wpaper:12-02
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.uww.edu/documents/colleges/cobe/economics/wpapers/12-02_Welsch.pdf
    File Function: Full text
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. David Card & Alan B. Krueger, 2005. "Would the Elimination of Affirmative Action Affect Highly Qualified Minority Applicants? Evidence from California and Texas," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 58(3), pages 416-434, April.
    2. Coate, Stephen & Loury, Glenn, 1993. "Antidiscrimination Enforcement and the Problem of Patronization," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 92-98, May.
    3. Robert A. Driskill & Andrew W. Horowitz, 2002. "Investment in Hierarchical Human Capital," Review of Development Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 6(1), pages 48-58, February.
    4. Rothschild, Michael & White, Lawrence J, 1995. "The Analytics of the Pricing of Higher Education and Other Services in Which the Customers Are Inputs," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 103(3), pages 573-586, June.
    5. 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.
    6. David Neumark & Harry Holzer, 2000. "Assessing Affirmative Action," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 483-568, September.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Holger Sieg, 2003. "The Practice and Proscription of Affirmative Action in Higher Education:An Equilibrium Analysis," NBER Working Papers 9799, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Qiang Fu, 2006. "A Theory of Affirmative Action in College Admissions," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 44(3), pages 420-428, July.
    11. 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.
    12. Loury, Linda Datcher & Garman, David, 1993. "Affirmative Action in Higher Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(2), pages 99-103, May.
    13. M. Kathleen Thomas, 2004. "Where College‐Bound Students Send Their SAT Scores: Does Race Matter?," Social Science Quarterly, Southwestern Social Science Association, vol. 85(5), pages 1374-1389, December.
    14. Su, Xuejuan, 2004. "The allocation of public funds in a hierarchical educational system," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 28(12), pages 2485-2510, December.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Hinrichs, Peter, 2014. "Affirmative action bans and college graduation rates," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 42(C), pages 43-52.
    2. 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.
    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. Dennis L. Weisman & Dong Li, 2017. "Weeds in the Ivy: college admissions under preference constraints," Applied Economics, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 49(3), pages 303-312, January.
    5. Andrew M. Francis & Maria Tannuri-Pianto, 2012. "Using Brazil’s Racial Continuum to Examine the Short-Term Effects of Affirmative Action in Higher Education," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 47(3), pages 754-784.
    6. 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.
    7. Maria Eduarda Tannuri Pianto & Andrew Francis, 2011. "The Redistributive Efficacy Ofaffirmative Action: Exploring The Role Of Race And Socioeconomic Statusin College Admissions," Anais do XXXVIII Encontro Nacional de Economia [Proceedings of the 38th Brazilian Economics Meeting] 218, ANPEC - Associação Nacional dos Centros de Pós-Graduação em Economia [Brazilian Association of Graduate Programs in Economics].
    8. Francis, Andrew M. & Tannuri-Pianto, Maria, 2012. "The redistributive equity of affirmative action: Exploring the role of race, socioeconomic status, and gender in college admissions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 45-55.
    9. 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.
    10. Moeeni, Safoura & Wei, Feng, 2022. "The labor market returns to unobserved skills: Evidence from a gender quota," CLEF Working Paper Series 53, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    11. Grau, Nicolás, 2018. "The impact of college admissions policies on the academic effort of high school students," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 65(C), pages 58-92.
    12. Pastine, Ivan & Pastine, Tuvana, 2012. "Student incentives and preferential treatment in college admissions," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 31(1), pages 123-130.
    13. 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.
    14. Roland G. Fryer Jr. & Glenn C. Loury, 2005. "Affirmative Action and Its Mythology," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 19(3), pages 147-162, Summer.
    15. Li, Dong & Weisman, Dennis L., 2011. "Why preferences in college admissions may yield a more-able student body," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 30(4), pages 724-728, August.
    16. Becker, Charles M. & Rouse, Cecilia Elena & Chen, Mingyu, 2016. "Can a summer make a difference? The impact of the American Economic Association Summer Program on minority student outcomes," Economics of Education Review, Elsevier, vol. 53(C), pages 46-71.
    17. Roland Fryer & Glenn C. Loury & Tolga Yuret, 2003. "Color-Blind Affirmative Action," NBER Working Papers 10103, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Sandra E. Black & Kalena E. Cortes & Jane Arnold Lincove, 2014. "Efficacy vs. Equity: What Happens When States Tinker with College Admissions in a Race-Blind Era?," NBER Working Papers 20804, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. 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.
    20. 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.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Affirmative Action; College;

    JEL classification:

    • I21 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Analysis of Education
    • I28 - Health, Education, and Welfare - - Education - - - Government Policy

    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:uww:wpaper:12-02. 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: Yamin Ahmad (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/eduwwus.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.