The Lifecycle of Affirmative Action Policies and Its Effect on Effort and Sabotage Behavior

Subhasish Chowdhury, Anastasia Danilov and Martin Kocher
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Anastasia Danilov: HU Berlin

No 401, Rationality and Competition Discussion Paper Series from CRC TRR 190 Rationality and Competition

Abstract: A main goal of affirmative action (AA) policies is to enable disadvantaged groups to compete with their privileged counterparts. Existing theoretical and empirical research documents that incorporating AA can result in both more egalitarian outcomes and higher exerted efforts. However, the direct behavioral effects of the introduction and removal of such policies are still under-researched. It is also unclear how specific AA policy instruments, for instance, head-start for a disadvantaged group or handicap for the privileged group, affect behavior. We examine these questions in a laboratory experiment in which individuals participate in a real-effort tournament and can sabotage each other. We find that AA does not necessarily result in higher effort. High performers that already experienced an existing AA-free tournament reduce their effort levels after the introduction of the AA policy. Additionally, we observe less sabotage under AA when the tournament started directly with the AA regime. The removal of AA policies, however, significantly intensifies sabotage. Finally, there are no overall systematic differences between handicap and head-start in terms of effort provision or sabotaging behavior.

Keywords: affirmative action; sabotage; experiment; tournament; handicap; head-start (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C72 C91 D63 D72 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023-06-14
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-mfd
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Related works:
Working Paper: The Lifecycle of Affirmative Action Policies and Its Effect on Effort and Sabotage Behavior (2023)
Working Paper: The Lifecycle of Affirmative Action Policies and Its Effect on Effort and Sabotage Behavior (2023)
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