Affirmative Action in India: Restricted Strategy Space, Complex Constraints, and Direct Mechanism Design

Orhan Ayg\"un and Bertan Turhan

Papers from arXiv.org

Abstract: Since 1950, India has instituted an intricate affirmative action program through a meticulously designed reservation system. This system incorporates vertical and horizontal reservations to address historically marginalized groups' socioeconomic imbalances. Vertical reservations designate specific quotas of available positions in publicly funded educational institutions and government employment for Scheduled Castes, Scheduled Tribes, Other Backward Classes, and Economically Weaker Sections. Concurrently, horizontal reservations are employed within each vertical category to allocate positions for additional subgroups, such as women and individuals with disabilities. In educational admissions, the legal framework recommended that unfilled positions reserved for the OBC category revert to unreserved status. Moreover, we document that individuals from vertically reserved categories have more complicated preferences over institution-vertical category position pairs, even though authorities only elicit their preferences over institutions. To address these challenges, the present paper proposes a novel class of choice rules, termed the Generalized Lexicographic (GL) choice rules. This class is comprehensive, subsuming the most salient priority structures discussed in the extant matching literature. Utilizing the GL choice rules and the deferred acceptance mechanism, we present a robust framework that generates equitable and effective solutions for resource allocation problems in the Indian context.

Date: 2023-10
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://arxiv.org/pdf/2310.02660 Latest version (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Affirmative Action in India: Restricted Strategy Space, Complex Constraints, and Direct Mechanism Design (2023)
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:arx:papers:2310.02660

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in Papers from arXiv.org
Bibliographic data for series maintained by arXiv administrators ().