Please use this form to submit your study for inclusion into our database. It will be checked by a member of the Innovation Growth Lab team, who may be in contact to ask for more information. Your email address * Your name * Title * The name of the study Short summary In the context of a lab experiment replicating the job/hiring market, this study reveals that prior to affirmative action, women, including high-performing women, fail to enter the competition, thus the actual performance costs of affirmitive action are negligible. This implies that the long-term effects are positive, as increasing the representation of "minorities" may improve mentoring possibilities, and change the perception of "minorities'" ability to hold a high-ranking position. A brief description of the project's goals and its current state Abstract <p>Affirmative action is often criticized for causing reverse discrimination and lowering the qualifications of those hired under the policy. However, the magnitude of such adverse effects depends on whether the best suited candidate is hired absent the policy. Indeed affirmative action may compensate for the distortion discrimination imposes on the selection of candidates. This paper asks whether affirmative action can have a similar corrective impact when qualified individuals fail to apply for a job. We evaluate the effect of introducing a gender quota in an environment where high-performing women fail to enter competitions they can win. We show that guaranteeing women equal representation among winners increases their entry. The response exceeds that predicted by the change in probability of winning and is in part driven by women being more willing to compete against other women. The consequences are substantial as the boost in supply essentially eliminates the anticipated costs of the policy.</p> The full abstract of the study, if available Links http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/mnsc.1120.1602 Links to any published papers and related discussions Authors * Affiliations Academic and other institutes that the authors of the study are members of Delivery partner Organisations involved in delivering the trial, if appropriate Year Year Year199419951996199719981999200020012002200320042005200620072008200920102011201220132014201520162017201820192020202120222023202420252026 Month MonthJanFebMarAprMayJunJulAugSepOctNovDec Day Day12345678910111213141516171819202122232425262728293031 Journal Journal publishing the study, if available Publication stage * Working Paper Published Ongoing Research Forthcoming Discussion Paper Research theme * Entrepreneurship Innovation Business Growth Country Country or countries where this study took place. Topics What sort of topics does the study cover? Sample attributes Hypotheses / research question Can affirmative action can encourage applications in settings where high-performing women or other "minority" candidates otherwise fail to apply for positions they are qualified for? How much lower will the performance be for winners under affirmative action? How many better performing men or "non-minorities" will have to be excluded to secure equal representation of those hired? Sample Trial population and sample selection The experiment was conducted at the Harvard Business School using standard recruiting procedures and students from the subject pool from their Computer Lab for Experimental Research (CLER). Number of treatment groups Size of treatment groups 82 individuals (42 men and 42 women) Size of control group Unit of analysis Clustered? Yes No Cluster details Trial attributes Treatment description Groups of three women and three men perform a real task where no gender differences in performance are expected -- adding up sets of five two-digit numbers for five minutes. Participants first perform the task under a piece-rate compensation and then under a standard tournament where all the compensation goes to the top two performers. Participants are informed of their absolute, but not relative performance. After experiencing both compensation schemes, participants then chose which of the two schemes they want to apply to their performance of the third task. Finally, for the fourth task, the compensation rules are changed to an affirmative action tournament where the compensation still goes to only two performers, but one of which is necessarily the top performing female, and the other receiving compensation is the remaining best male or female performer. Rounds of data collection Baseline data collection and method Registration information collected demographic data. Data collection method and data collected Evaluation Outcome variables <p>Performance: Number of correct answers during each Task. Selection into piece-rate or tournament pay schemes: For Tasks 3, 4, 5, and 6, subjects are asked which pay scheme they prefer to enter/apply.</p> Results <p>Affirmative action causes a large increase in the tournament entry by women and a decrease in the entry by men. Although some high-performing men drop out of the competition, many women come in, and the overall number of high-performing participants in the entry pool is barely affected. This change in the gender composition of the applicant pool causes the observed performance costs to be substantially smaller than predicted. The performance requirements for men and women are essentially the same under affirmative action, and there is limited or no reverse discrimination.</p> Intervention costs Not available. Cost benefit ratio Reference Muriel, N., Segal, C., & Vesterlund, L. 2013. 'How Costly Is Diversity? Affirmative Action in Light of Gender Differences in Competitiveness'. Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 59(1), pages 1-16, May. Citation for use in academic references
