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: School of Management and Economics, Humboldt-University of Berlin, 10178 Berlin, Germany.

No 2023012, Working Papers from The University of Sheffield, Department of Economics

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. There is 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)
Pages: 90 pages
Date: 2023-05
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ltv
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https://www.sheffield.ac.uk/economics/research/serps First version, May 16 2023 (application/pdf)

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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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:shf:wpaper:2023012

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