An Information Theory of Efficient Differential Treatment

Emil Temnyalov

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2023, vol. 15, issue 1, 323-58

Abstract: When are differential treatment policies—such as preferential treatment, affirmative action, and gender equity policies—justified by efficiency concerns? I propose a nonparametric assignment model where a policymaker assigns agents to different treatments or positions to maximize total surplus, based on the agents' characteristics and noisy information about their types. I provide necessary and sufficient conditions on the agents' signal structures, which characterize whether surplus maximization requires differential treatment or not, and study how the bias and informativeness of signal structures determine the efficiency implications of differential treatment. I examine implications of this model for inequality, decentralization, and empirical work.

JEL-codes: D63 D82 D83 I23 I24 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20200400 (application/pdf)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20200400.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:aea:aejmic:v:15:y:2023:i:1:p:323-58

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20200400

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().