Perceived Fairness and Consequences of Affirmative Action Policies

Hannah Schildberg-Hörisch, Marco Schwarz, Chi Trieu and Jana Willrodt

The Economic Journal, 2023, vol. 133, issue 656, 3099-3135

Abstract: Debates about affirmative action often revolve around fairness. In a laboratory experiment, we study three quota rules in tournaments that favour individuals whose performance is low, either due to discrimination, low productivity, or choice of a short working time. Affirmative action favouring discriminated individuals is perceived as fairest, followed by that targeting individuals with a short working time, while favouring low-productivity individuals is not perceived as fairer than an absence of affirmative action. Higher fairness perceptions coincide with a higher willingness to compete and less retaliation against winners, underlining that fairness perceptions matter for the consequences of affirmative action.

Date: 2023
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1093/ej/uead063 (application/pdf)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Perceived Fairness and Consequences of Affirmative Action Policies (2022)
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:oup:econjl:v:133:y:2023:i:656:p:3099-3135.

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://academic.oup.com/journals

Access Statistics for this article

The Economic Journal is currently edited by Francesco Lippi

More articles in The Economic Journal from Royal Economic Society Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Oxford University Press () and ().