TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bracha, Anat
AU  - Cohen, Alma
AU  - Conell-Price, Lynn
TI  - The Heterogeneous Effect of Affirmative Action on Performance
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 25322
PY  - 2018
Y2  - December 2018
DO  - 10.3386/w25322
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25322
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w25322.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Anat Bracha
Research Department
600 Atlantic Ave
Boston, MA 02210
E-Mail: anat.bracha@bos.frb.org

Alma Cohen
Harvard Law School
1525 Massachusetts Avenue
Cambridge, MA 02138
E-Mail: alcohen@law.harvard.edu

Lynn Conell-Price
5000 Forbes Avenue
BP 208
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
USA
E-Mail: lconellp@andrew.cmu.edu
AB  - This paper experimentally investigates the effect of gender-based affirmative action (AA) on performance in the lab, focusing on a tournament environment. The tournament is based on GRE math questions commonly used in graduate school admission, and at which women are known to perform worse on average than men. We find heterogeneous effect of AA on female participants: AA lowers the performance of high-ability women and increases the performance of low-ability women. Our results are consistent with two possible mechanisms—one is that AA changes incentives differentially for low- and high-ability women, and the second is that AA triggers stereotype threat.
ER  -