The Direct and Spillover Effects of Large-Scale Affirmative Action at an Elite Brazilian University

Cecilia Machado, Germán Reyes and Evan Riehl

Journal of Labor Economics, 2025, vol. 43, issue 2, 391 - 431

Abstract: We examine the effects of an affirmative action policy at an elite Brazilian university that reserved 45% of admission slots for Black and low-income students. We find that marginally admitted students who enrolled through the affirmative action tracks experienced a 14% increase in early-career earnings. But the adoption of affirmative action also caused a large decrease in earnings for the university’s most highly ranked students. We present evidence that the negative spillover effects on highly ranked students’ earnings were driven by both a reduction in human capital accumulation and a decline in the value of networking.

Date: 2025
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726385 (application/pdf)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1086/726385 (text/html)
Access to the online full text or PDF requires a subscription.

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:ucp:jlabec:doi:10.1086/726385

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Labor Economics from University of Chicago Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Journals Division ().