College Admission with Multidimensional Privileges: The Brazilian Affirmative Action Case

Orhan Aygün and Inacio Bo
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Orhan Aygun ()

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics, 2021, vol. 13, issue 3, 1-28

Abstract: In 2012, Brazilian public universities were mandated to use affirmative action policies for candidates from racial and income minorities. We show that the policy makes the students' affirmative action status a strategic choice and may reject high-achieving minority students while admitting low-achieving majority students. Empirical data shows evidence consistent with this type of unfairness in more than 49 percent of the programs. We propose a selection criterion and an incentive-compatible mechanism that, for a wider range of similar problems and the one in Brazil in particular, is fair and removes any gain from strategizing over the privileges claimed.

JEL-codes: D82 H52 I23 I28 J15 O15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (12)

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20170364 (application/pdf)
https://doi.org/10.3886/E118942V1 (text/html)
https://www.aeaweb.org/doi/10.1257/mic.20170364.ds (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

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:aea:aejmic:v:13:y:2021:i:3:p:1-28

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

DOI: 10.1257/mic.20170364

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Journal: Microeconomics is currently edited by Johannes Hörner

More articles in American Economic Journal: Microeconomics from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().