Affirmative Action with Overlapping Reserves: Equity, Fairness, and Complementarity

Cyril Rouault

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Abstract: Affirmative action policies, by establishing representation thresholds for protected groups, seek to balance fairness and equity in various assignment problems. Fairness is maintained by prioritizing individuals based on merit scores, while equity is ensured through guaranteed group representation. We focus on overlapping reserves, where individuals can belong to multiple groups, and introduce the Maximal Score and Minimum Guarantee (MSMG) choice rule, which upholds representation requirements while preserving fairness. We define the score of an assignment as the sum of the merit scores of the selected individuals. We demonstrate that the assignment produced by the MSMG choice rule achieves the highest possible score among all fair assignments that satisfy the given representation thresholds.

Keywords: Matching; Affirmative action; Complementarity; Merit scores (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-04-30
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