IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/red/sed017/1552.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Promoting Educational Opportunities: Long-run Implications of Affirmative Action in College Admissions

Author

Listed:
  • Joao Ramos

    (University of Southern California)

  • Bernard Herskovic

    (UCLA Anderson School of Management)

Abstract

This paper investigates the implications of affirmative action in college admissions for welfare, aggregate output, educational investment decisions and intergenerational persistence of earnings. We construct an overlapping-generations model in which parents choose how much to invest in their child's education, thereby increasing both human capital and likelihood of college admission. Affirmative action improves the pool of admitted students, although it changes incentives towards educational investments. We calibrate the model to quantify affirmative action long-run effects. We find that affirmative action targeting the bottom quintile of the income distribution is a powerful policy to reduce intergenerational persistence of earnings and improve welfare and aggregate output.

Suggested Citation

  • Joao Ramos & Bernard Herskovic, 2017. "Promoting Educational Opportunities: Long-run Implications of Affirmative Action in College Admissions," 2017 Meeting Papers 1552, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    • Handle: RePEc:red:sed017:1552
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://red-files-public.s3.amazonaws.com/meetpapers/2017/paper_1552.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    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. Tauchen, George, 1986. "Finite state markov-chain approximations to univariate and vector autoregressions," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 20(2), pages 177-181.
    3. Diego Restuccia & Carlos Urrutia, 2004. "Intergenerational Persistence of Earnings: The Role of Early and College Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1354-1378, December.
    4. Kala Krishna & Alexander Tarasov, 2016. "Affirmative Action: One Size Does Not Fit All," American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, American Economic Association, vol. 8(2), pages 215-252, May.
    5. Hans A. Holter, 2015. "Accounting for cross‐country differences in intergenerational earnings persistence: The impact of taxation and public education expenditure," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(2), pages 385-428, July.
    6. Coate, Stephen & Loury, Glenn C, 1993. "Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1220-1240, December.
    7. 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.
    8. 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.
    9. William Blankenau & Xiaoyan Youderian, 2015. "Early childhood education expenditures and the intergenerational persistence of income," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 334-349, April.
    10. Unknown, 1986. "Letters," Choices: The Magazine of Food, Farm, and Resource Issues, Agricultural and Applied Economics Association, vol. 1(4), pages 1-9.
    11. Dennis Epple & Richard Romano & Holger Sieg, 2008. "Diversity and Affirmative Action in Higher Education," Journal of Public Economic Theory, Association for Public Economic Theory, vol. 10(4), pages 475-501, August.
    12. Solon, Gary, 1992. "Intergenerational Income Mobility in the United States," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 82(3), pages 393-408, June.
    13. Becker, Gary S & Tomes, Nigel, 1979. "An Equilibrium Theory of the Distribution of Income and Intergenerational Mobility," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(6), pages 1153-1189, December.
    14. Yoram Ben-Porath, 1967. "The Production of Human Capital and the Life Cycle of Earnings," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 75(4), pages 352-352.
    15. Hanming Fang & Peter Norman, 2006. "Government-Mandated Discriminatory Policies: Theory And Evidence," International Economic Review, Department of Economics, University of Pennsylvania and Osaka University Institute of Social and Economic Research Association, vol. 47(2), pages 361-389, May.
    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. Del Rey Elena & Estevan Fernanda, 2020. "Assessing Higher Education Policy in Brazil: A Mixed Oligopoly Approach," The B.E. Journal of Economic Analysis & Policy, De Gruyter, vol. 20(1), pages 1-16, January.
    2. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Ory, 2017. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 3012, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    3. Brotherhood, Luiz & Delalibera, Bruno R., 2020. "Minding the gap between schools and universities," Journal of Economic Dynamics and Control, Elsevier, vol. 120(C).
    4. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Öry, 2022. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 402-444, May.

    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. Luiz Brotherhood & Bernard Herskovic & Joao Ramos, 2022. "Income-based affirmative action in college admissions," UB School of Economics Working Papers 2022/425, University of Barcelona School of Economics.
    2. Luiz Brotherhood & Bernard Herskovic & João Ramos, 2023. "Income-Based Affirmative Action in College Admissions," The Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 133(653), pages 1810-1845.
    3. Christopher Rauh, 2015. "The Political Economy of Early and College Education - Can Voting Bend the Great Gatsby Curve?," 2015 Meeting Papers 82, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    4. Christopher Herrington, 2015. "Public Education Financing, Earnings Inequality, and Intergenerational Mobility," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(4), pages 822-842, October.
    5. 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.
    6. William Blankenau & Xiaoyan Youderian, 2015. "Early childhood education expenditures and the intergenerational persistence of income," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 18(2), pages 334-349, April.
    7. Diego Restuccia & Carlos Urrutia, 2004. "Intergenerational Persistence of Earnings: The Role of Early and College Education," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(5), pages 1354-1378, December.
    8. Hellier, Joël, 2017. "Stratified higher education,social mobility at the top and efficiency: The case of the French ‘Grandes écoles’," MPRA Paper 76724, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    9. Kuzey Yilmaz, 2014. "On the Importance of Fertility Behavior in School Finance Policy Design," Koç University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum Working Papers 1403, Koc University-TUSIAD Economic Research Forum.
    10. Hans A. Holter, 2015. "Accounting for cross‐country differences in intergenerational earnings persistence: The impact of taxation and public education expenditure," Quantitative Economics, Econometric Society, vol. 6(2), pages 385-428, July.
    11. Tomoaki Kotera & Ananth Seshadri, 2017. "Educational Policy and Intergenerational Policy," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 25, pages 187-207, April.
    12. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Öry, 2022. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, American Economic Association, vol. 14(2), pages 402-444, May.
    13. 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.
    14. Michèle Müller-Itten & Aniko Ory, 2017. "Mentoring and the Dynamics of Affirmative Action," Cowles Foundation Discussion Papers 3012, Cowles Foundation for Research in Economics, Yale University.
    15. Christopher Herrington, 2013. "Public Education Financing Systems, Earnings Inequality, and Intergenerational Mobility," 2013 Meeting Papers 1233, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    16. Rauh, Christopher, 2017. "Voting, education, and the Great Gatsby Curve," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 146(C), pages 1-14.
    17. Vera Tolstova, 2021. "Marital Sorting and Cross-Country Differences in Intergenerational Earnings Persistence," CERGE-EI Working Papers wp680, The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague.
    18. Manuel Toledo, 2006. "On the Intergenerational Persistence of Work Hours," 2006 Meeting Papers 226, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    19. Seshadri, Ananth & Yuki, Kazuhiro, 2004. "Equity and efficiency effects of redistributive policies," Journal of Monetary Economics, Elsevier, vol. 51(7), pages 1415-1447, October.
    20. Soojin Kim, 2014. "The Effects of Labor Migration on Optimal Taxation: An International Tax Competition Analysis," 2014 Meeting Papers 508, Society for Economic Dynamics.

    More about this item

    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:red:sed017:1552. 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: Christian Zimmermann (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/sedddea.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.