TY  - JOUR
AU  - Arcidiacono,Peter
AU  - Aucejo,Esteban M.
AU  - Fang,Hanming
AU  - Spenner,Kenneth I.
TI  - Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch? A New Test and Evidence
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 14885
PY  - 2009
Y2  - April 2009
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14885
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w14885.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Peter Arcidiacono
Department of Economics
201A Social Sciences Building
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
Tel: 919/660-1816
Fax: 919/684-8974
E-Mail: psarcidi@econ.duke.edu

Esteban M. Aucejo
Department of Economics
London School of Economics and Political Science
Houghton Street, London, WC2A 2AE
CEP, Office 2.29
United Kingdom
Tel: 020 7852 3563
E-Mail: E.M.Aucejo@lse.ac.uk

Hanming Fang
Department of Economics
University of Pennsylvania
3718 Locust Walk
Philadelphia, PA 19104
Tel: 215-898-7767
Fax: 215-573-2057
E-Mail: hanming.fang@econ.upenn.edu

Kenneth I.. Spenner
Department of Sociology
Duke University
Durham, NC 27708
E-Mail: kspen@soc.duke.edu
AB  - We argue that once we take into account the students' rational enrollment decisions, mismatch in the sense that the intended beneficiary of affirmative action admission policies are made worse off could occur only if selective universities possess private information about students' post-enrollment treatment effects. This necessary condition for mismatch provides the basis for a new test. We propose an empirical methodology to test for private information in such a setting. The test is implemented using data from Campus Life and Learning Project (CLL) at Duke. Evidence shows that Duke does possess private information that is a statistically significant predictor of the students' post-enrollment academic performance. We also propose strategies to evaluate more conclusively whether the evidence of Duke private information has generated mismatch.
ER  -