 The incentive and efficiency effects of affirmative action: does envy matter?Rezina Sultana Oxford Economic Papers, 2019, vol. 71, issue 4, 930-951 Abstract: This paper introduces envy into the study of affirmative action (AA) policies. Envy is defined as occurring when people have the same income with different abilities or with equal abilities have different incomes because of unequal access to employment opportunities—which occurs both under adverse and compensatory-discrimination. I analyse how envy, when there is discrimination, interacts with incentive for individuals to make productivity-enhancing investment and thereby affects economic efficiency. A policymaker maximizes the expected utility of the population taking into account the trade-off between fairness or equity (no-envy) and efficiency. An exclusive equal opportunity policy (EOP) that forestalls envy would allocate skilled jobs in a manner skewed towards the historically advantaged group. I study the conditions under which AA is fairness-improving in access to ‘good’ jobs and the implications for efficiency in job allocation between ex ante advantaged and disadvantaged groups. JEL-codes: A12 D61 D63 (search for similar items in EconPapers) Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:oup:oxecpp:v:71:y:2019:i:4:p:930-951. Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Oxford Economic Papers is currently edited by James Forder and Francis J. Teal More articles in Oxford Economic Papers from Oxford University Press Oxford University Press, Great Clarendon Street, Oxford OX2 6DP, UK. |
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