Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/237590 
Year of Publication: 
2021
Series/Report no.: 
UCD Centre for Economic Research Working Paper Series No. WP21/12
Publisher: 
University College Dublin, UCD Centre for Economic Research, Dublin
Abstract: 
We study the origins of support for gender-related affirmative action (AA) in two pre-registered online experiments (N = 1, 700). Participants act as employers who decide whether to use AA in hiring job candidates. We implement three treatments to disentangle the preference for AA stemming from i) perceived gender differences in productivity, ii) beliefs about AA effects on productivity, or iii) other non-material motives. To test i), we provide information to employers that there is no gender gap in productivity. To test ii), we inform the candidates about the hiring rule ex-ante, allowing us to observe how AA is expected to affect productivity. To test iii), we remove the payment to the employers based on the chosen candidates' productivity, thus making AA cheaper. We do not find significant differences in AA support across treatments, despite successfully altering beliefs about expected productivity differences. Our results suggest that AA choice reflects a more intrinsic and inelastic preference for advancing female candidates
Subjects: 
affirmative action
beliefs
gender
information
institution
JEL: 
C91
D02
D83
J38
J71
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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