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Can Business Rights Alleviate Group-Based Inequality in Sub-Saharan Africa?Part of Journal Special Issue Legal Empowerment and Group-Based Inequality
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Journal Article
Do disadvantaged students benefit from attending classes with more skilled colleagues?Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university in Brazil that splits students into two classes, we apply a regression discontinuity design to study the effect of class allocation on academic performance and...
Working Paper
Affirmative action with no major switchingAffirmative action in higher education may lead to mismatch, a situation where students benefiting from preferential admission struggle with their college-level work because of poor pre-college academic preparation. In the United States, those...
Working Paper
Do disadvantaged students benefit from attending classes with more skilled colleagues?Peers play an essential role in cognitive and non-cognitive skills formation. Ordinal rank may also change incentives and environment, impacting students’ efforts. Using two rich administrative data sets and a rule of admission at one top university...
Working Paper
Standardization and ethnocracy in Sri LankaStandardization was the scheme that replaced meritocracy in Sri Lanka education, with positive discrimination to increase the majority Sinhalese community’s university enrolment. It did so by minimizing better-qualified minority Tamils’ university...
Working Paper
Affirmative action: meaning, intentions, and impacts in the big pictureThis paper provides a broad overview of the meaning of affirmative action and its intended and unintended impacts. The paper is a literature review and does not make any arguments specifically for or against affirmative action but describes the broad...
Working Paper
The legal basis for affirmative action in IndiaThe affirmative action policy in India came into practice because of the generations of struggle undergone by the untouchable castes and other backward classes, who were historically excluded from education and administration. As society changed, it...
Working Paper
The politics of affirmative action: ethnicity, equity, and state-business relations in MalaysiaMalaysia provides for interesting paradoxes. Poverty was reduced by adopting a horizontal perspective to policy planning through affirmative action targeting one ethnic group lagging economically in society. However, outcomes of affirmative action...
Working Paper
Does affirmative action address ethnic inequality?Despite the good intentions behind affirmative action policies to mediate ‘horizontal inequalities’ between ethnic groups, the evidence on their effectiveness remains open to debate. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of the literature...
Working Paper
The impact of affirmative action in India and the United StatesThis paper provides a systematic review of quantitative literature investigating the success of affirmative action policies in addressing socio-economic inequalities between ethnic groups in education and employment. We focus on two of the most...
Working Paper
Affirmative action around the world: insights from a new datasetAffirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach for addressing group-based inequalities along ethnic, religious, and racial lines (e.g. horizontal inequalities). It is adopted...
Journal Article
Bridging the gapAffirmative action in higher education can lead to mismatch, where students admitted through preferential treatment struggle academically due to inadequate preparation before college. Although some students may face initial challenges, by providing...
Blog
Affirmative action policies to increase diversity are successful, but controversial, around the worldIn a landmark judgment in June 2023, the US Supreme Court ruled against the use of race-conscious admissions in colleges and universities. This...
Working Paper
The effect of class assignment on academic performance and the labour marketCan students’ rank in the ability distribution of their class impact their academic achievement? We aim to answer this question using a discontinuity generated by a rule for the distribution of students between classes at a prestigious Brazilian...
Blog
Affirmative action in Brazil’s higher education systemEvidence from Brazil shows how affirmative action students in the higher education system adjust their behaviour to catch up with initially higher...
Working Paper
Affirmative action around the world: insights from a new dataset (update)Affirmative action, or positive discrimination favouring the members of marginalized populations, is a key policy approach to addressing group-based inequalities. It is adopted in dozens of countries around the world in the areas of, for instance...
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