The incentive effects of affirmative action in a real-effort tournament
Calsamiglia, Caterina (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica)
Franke, Jörg (Technische Universität Dortmund. Department of Economics and Social Science)
Rey-Biel, Pedro (Universitat Autònoma de Barcelona. Departament d'Economia i d'Història Econòmica)

Imprint:	Barcelona : Barcelona Graduate School of Economics, 2009
Description:	33 pag.
Abstract:	Affirmative-action policies bias tournament rules in order to provide equal opportunities to a group of competitors who have a disadvantage they cannot be held responsible for. Critics argue that they distort incentives, resulting in lower individual performance, and that the selected pool of tournament winners may be inefficient. In this paper, we study the empirical validity of such claims in a real-effort pair-wise tournament between children from two similar schools who systematically differ in how much training they received ex-ante in the task at hand. Our results show that performance was not reduced for either advantaged or disadvantaged subjects and that it was in fact enhanced. Additionally, while affirmative action balanced the proportion of disadvantaged individuals winning their respective tournament, the average performance of the pool of winners only decreased slightly.
Grants:	Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología SEJ2005-01481 Ministerio de Ciencia y Tecnología SEJ2005-01690 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia ECO2008-04756 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2005/SGR-00626 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2005/SGR-00836 Agència de Gestió d'Ajuts Universitaris i de Recerca 2005/SGR-00454 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia CSD2006-00016 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia SEJ2005-01481 Ministerio de Educación y Ciencia SEJ2006-00538
Rights:	Tots els drets reservats.
Language:	Anglès
Series:	Barcelona GSE Working Paper Series ; 404
Document:	Working paper ; Versió publicada
Subject:	Affirmative action ; Tournament ; Real-effort ; Experiment ; Sudoku

Adreça alternativa: https://www.barcelonagse.eu/research/working-papers/incentive-effects-affirmative-action-real-effort-tournament

33 p, 236.3 KB

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