Choice with Affirmative Action

Battal Dogan and Kemal Yildiz

Management Science, 2023, vol. 69, issue 4, 2284-2296

Abstract: A choice rule with affirmative action decides on the recipients of a limited number of identical objects by reconciling two objectives: respecting a priority ordering over the applicants and supporting a minority group. We extend the standard formulation of a choice problem by incorporating a type function and a priority ordering and introduce monotonicity axioms on how a choice rule should respond to variations in these parameters. We show that monotonic and substitutable affirmative action rules are the ones that admit a bounded reserve representation . As a prominent class of choice rules that satisfy the monotonicity axioms, we characterize lexicographic affirmative action rules that are prevalent both in the literature and in practice. Our axiomatic approach provides a novel way to think about reserve systems and uncovers choice rules that go beyond lexicographic affirmative action rules.

Keywords: affirmative action; bounded reserve representation; lexicographic choice (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2023
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:inm:ormnsc:v:69:y:2023:i:4:p:2284-2296

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