Affirmative Action and University Fit: Evidence from Proposition 209

Peter Arcidiacono, Esteban Aucejo, Patrick Coate and V. Joseph Hotz

No 18523, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Proposition 209 banned the use of racial preferences in admissions at public colleges in California. We analyze unique data for all applicants and enrollees within the University of California (UC) system before and after Prop 209. After Prop 209, graduation rates increased by 4.4%. We present evidence that certain institutions are better at graduating more-prepared students while other institutions are better at graduating less-prepared students and that these matching effects are particularly important for the bottom tail of the qualification distribution. We find that Prop 209 led to a more efficient sorting of minority students, explaining 18% of the graduation rate increase in our preferred specification. Further, universities appear to have responded to Prop 209 by investing more in their students, explaining between 23-64% of the graduation rate increase.

JEL-codes: I23 I28 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2012-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab
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Published as Affirmative action and university fit: evidence from Proposition 209 Peter Arcidiacono12*, Esteban Aucejo3, Patrick Coate4 and V Joseph Hotz125 * Corresponding author: Peter Arcidiacono peter.arcidiacono@duke.edu Author Affiliations For all author emails, please log on. IZA Journal of Labor Economics 2014, 3:7 doi:10.1186/2193-8997-3-7 Published: 15 September 2014

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Related works:
Working Paper: Affirmative Action and University Fit: Evidence from Proposition 209 (2013)
Working Paper: Affirmative action and university fit: evidence from Proposition 209 (2013)
Working Paper: Affirmative Action and University Fit: Evidence from Proposition 209 (2012)
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