Does Affirmative Action Lead to Mismatch? A New Test and Evidence

• Published in: NBER Working Paper Series 2009-04, p.14885
• Main Authors: Arcidiacono, Peter, Aucejo, Esteban M, Fang, Hanming, Spenner, Kenneth I
• Format: Article
• Language: English
• Subjects: Admissions policies; Affirmative action; College admissions; Decision making; Economic theory; Economics; Enrollments; Expected utility; Hypotheses; Minority students; Race; Social sciences; University admissions
• ISSN: 0898-2937
• DOI: 10.3386/w14885

Working Paper No. 14885 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.