Affirm or deny
Test Scores, Subjective Assessment, and Stereotyping of Ethnic Minorities
Simon Burgess & Ellen Greaves
Journal of Labor Economics, July 2013, Pages 535-576
Abstract:
We assess whether ethnic minority pupils are subject to low teacher expectations. We exploit the English testing system of "quasi-blind" externally marked tests and "nonblind" internal assessment to compare differences in these assessment methods between white and ethnic minority pupils. We find evidence that some ethnic groups are systematically underassessed relative to their white peers, while some are overassessed. We propose a stereotype model in which a teacher's local experience of an ethnic group affects assessment of current pupils; this is supported by the data.
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Access to Higher Education by the Luck of the Draw
Peter Stone
Comparative Education Review, August 2013, Pages 577-599
Abstract:
Random selection is a fair way to break ties between applicants of equal merit seeking admission to institutions of higher education (with "merit" defined here in terms of the intrinsic contribution higher education would make to the applicant's life). Opponents of random selection commonly argue that differences in strength between applicant claims almost always exist, so that few if any ties need be broken. Fairness, however, also demands that no distinctions be drawn among applicant claims unless those distinctions are more likely to track merit than extraneous arbitrary factors (such as race, gender, or class). Fairness thus requires random selection under the right circumstances, and these circumstances frequently obtain in the realm of higher education admissions.
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MIT's Openness to Jewish Economists
Roy Weintraub
Duke University Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
MIT emerged from "nowhere" in the 1930s to its place as one of the three or four most important sites for economic research by the mid-1950s. A conference held at Duke University in April 2013 examined how this occurred. In this paper the author argues that the immediate postwar period saw a collapse - in some places slower, in some places faster - of the barriers to the hiring of Jewish faculty in American colleges and universities. And more than any other elite private or public university, particularly Ivy League universities, MIT welcomed Jewish economists.
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Nancy Burnett & Lee James Van Scyoc
Journal of Sports Economics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Keefer's recent article in the Journal of Sports Economics, "Compensation discrimination for defensive players: applying quantile regression to the National Football League market for linebackers," finds wage discrimination in the National Football League market for linebackers. Following Keefer, we examine both ordinary least squares and quantile analysis, as well as Oaxaca and quantile treatment effects decompositions though we explore the market not only for linebackers but also for offensive linemen and limit our study to rookie players. We would expect to find stronger evidence of discrimination, as rookies are captured sellers. However, we find no pattern of discrimination against Blacks.
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Does policy name matter? The effect of framing on the evaluations of African American applicants
Germine Awad
Journal of Applied Social Psychology, June 2013, Pages E379-E387
Abstract:
Affirmative action continues to be one of the most contentious policies in the U.S. The current study examined the effect of hiring policy framing on the evaluation of African American applicants. Participants (N = 204) reviewed the résumé of an African American man either hired under an affirmative-action or a diversity-initiative frame. Results indicated that the applicant was evaluated as more competent under the diversity-initiative frame than the affirmative-action frame. This was especially true for White and conservative raters. The findings suggest that shifting to an emphasis on diversity instead of affirmative action may decrease negative attitudes toward affirmative-action beneficiaries.
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Frank Samson
Comparative Education Review, August 2013, Pages 369-396
Abstract:
This study identifies a theoretical mechanism that could potentially affect public university admissions standards in a context of demographic change. I explore how demographic changes at a prestigious public university in the United States affect individuals' evaluations of college applications. Responding to a line graph that randomly displays a freshmen enrollment trend toward a white plurality or an Asian American plurality, white student evaluators lower their minimum class rank standard for admitting white applicants when exposed to an Asian American plurality trend. They also raise the minimum test percentile standard for admitting Asian American applicants. Notably, plurality trend does not affect Asian American student evaluators' minimum standards for recommending admission. Applications differed only by applicant race.
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Joshua Pitts & Daniel Yost
Review of Black Political Economy, June 2013, Pages 207-230
Abstract:
This study revisits the issue of racial position segregation or racial "stacking" in intercollegiate football. Estimating a probit model, we examine the impact that a player's race has on the probability of him changing positions when he moves from high school to the collegiate ranks. Descriptive statistics of our data reveal significant evidence that racial position segregation is widespread in high school football. The data also offers much information about which players are likely to change positions and the positions that they are likely to switch to when transitioning from high school to college. Most notably, our probit results reveal that African American high school quarterbacks and white high school running backs are significantly more likely to change positions in college than their white and African American counterparts, respectively. Thus, while other positions do not appear to become more racially segregated as players transition from high school to college, the quarterback and running back positions do appear to become significantly more racially segregated.
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Clara Kulich, Michelle Ryan & Alexander Haslam
Political Research Quarterly, forthcoming
Abstract:
An archival study of U.K. General Election results from 2001, 2005, and 2010 revealed that Conservative black and minority ethnic (BME) candidates were less successful than their white counterparts. However, mediation analyses demonstrate that this lack of success can be explained by the lower winnability of BME candidates' seats, such that the opposition candidate held a seat with a significantly larger majority compared with white candidates' opponents. Results and implications are discussed in the framework of the "glass cliff," previously demonstrated for women, in the sense that the seats minority groups contested were harder to win compared with majority groups.
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Discrimination in grading: Experimental evidence from primary school teachers
Maresa Sprietsma
Empirical Economics, August 2013, Pages 523-538
Abstract:
This paper studies the effect of teacher expectations on essay grades in an experimental setting. For this purpose, we randomly assign Turkish or German first names to a set of essays so that some teachers believe a given essay was written by a German native pupil, whereas others believe it was written by a pupil of Turkish origin. We find that the same essays obtain significantly worse grades and lower secondary school recommendations when bearing a Turkish sounding name.
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Race and College Success: Evidence from Missouri
Peter Arcidiacono & Cory Koedel
NBER Working Paper, June 2013
Abstract:
Conditional on enrollment, African American students are substantially less likely to graduate from 4-year public universities than white students. Using administrative micro data from Missouri, we decompose the graduation gap between African Americans and whites into four factors: (1) racial differences in how students sort to universities, (2) racial differences in how students sort to initial majors, (3) racial differences in school quality prior to entry, and (4) racial differences in other observed pre-entry skills. Pre-entry skills explain 65 and 86 percent of the gap for women and men respectively. A small role is found for differential sorting into college, particularly for women, and this is driven by African Americans being disproportionately represented at urban schools and the schools at the very bottom of the quality distribution.
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The Academic Achievement of American Indians
Stefanie Fischer & Christiana Stoddard
Economics of Education Review, October 2013, Pages 135-152
Abstract:
The academic achievement of American Indians has not been extensively studied. Using NAEP supplements, we find that the average achievement relative to white students resembles other disadvantaged groups. However, there are several differences. Family characteristics explain two times as much of the raw gap as for blacks. School factors also account for a larger portion of the gap than for blacks or Hispanics. The distribution is also strikingly different: low performing American Indian students have a substantially larger gap than high performing students. Finally, racial self-identification is more strongly related to achievement, especially as American Indian students age.
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Skin Color, Sex, and Educational Attainment in the Post-Civil-Rights Era
Amelia Branigan et al.
Social Science Research, forthcoming
Abstract:
We assess the relationship between skin color and educational attainment for native-born non-Hispanic Black and White men and women, using data from the Coronary Artery Risk Development in Young Adults (CARDIA) Study. CARDIA is a medical cohort study with twenty years of social background data and a continuous measure of skin color, recorded as the percent of light reflected off skin. For Black men and women, we find a one-standard-deviation increase in skin lightness to be associated with a quarter-year increase in educational attainment. For White women, we find an association approximately equal in magnitude to that found for Black respondents, and the pattern of significance across educational transitions suggests that skin color for White women is not simply a proxy for family background. For White men, any relationship between skin color and attainment is not robust and, analyses suggest, might primarily reflect differences in family background. Findings suggest that discrimination on the basis of skin color may be less specific to race than previously thought.
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The Evolution of the Black-White Test Score Gap in Grades K-3: The Fragility of Results
Timothy Bond & Kevin Lang
Review of Economics and Statistics, forthcoming
Abstract:
Although both economists and psychometricians typically treat them as interval scales, test scores are reported using ordinal scales. Using the Early Childhood Longitudinal Study and the Children of the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, we examine how order-preserving scale transformations affect the evolution of the black-white reading test score gap from kindergarten entry through third grade. Plausible transformations reverse the growth of the gap in the CNLSY and greatly reduce it in the ECLS-K during the early school years. All growth from entry through first grade and a nontrivial proportion from first to third grade probably reflects scaling decisions.
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The Black-White Education-Scaled Test-Score Gap in Grades K-7
Timothy Bond & Kevin Lang
NBER Working Paper, July 2013
Abstract:
We address the ordinality of test scores by rescaling them by the average eventual educational attainment of students with a given test score in a given grade. We show that measurement error in test scores causes this approach to underestimate the black-white test score gap and use an instrumental variables procedure to adjust the gap. While the unadjusted gap grows rapidly in the early school years, particularly in reading, after correction for measurement error, the education-scaled gap is large, exceeds the actual black-white education gap and is roughly constant. Strikingly, the gap in all grades is largely explained by a small number of measures of socioeconomic background. We discuss the interpretation of scales tied to adult outcomes.
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An Analysis of Black-White Wage Differences in Nursing: Wage Gap or Wage Premium?
Richard Carey McGregory
Review of Black Political Economy, March 2013, Pages 31-37
Abstract:
This paper analyzes whether a black-white racial wage differential exists in the nursing labor market in the US. Despite claims of a nursing shortage, little examination of whether racial inequalities in the labor market might contribute to this purported shortage has occurred. Possible explanations for black-white differences in RN compensation include racial differences in: occupation; returns to skills; metropolitan residency; union membership. Regression analysis on wages for registered nurses (RNs) was conducted. Findings suggest a wage penalty for non-union black nurses compared to non-union white nurses as well as the absence of a racial wage differential for union nurses.
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Cultural Diversity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship: Firm-level Evidence from London
Max Nathan & Neil Lee
Economic Geography, forthcoming
Abstract:
A growing body of research is making links between diversity and the economic performance of cities and regions. Most of the underlying mechanisms take place within firms, but only a handful of organization-level studies have been conducted. We contribute to this underexplored literature by using a unique sample of 7,600 firms to investigate links among cultural diversity, innovation, entrepreneurship, and sales strategies in London businesses between 2005 and 2007. London is one of the world's major cities, with a rich cultural diversity that is widely seen as a social and economic asset. Our data allowed us to distinguish owner/partner and wider workforce characteristics, identify migrant/minority-headed firms, and differentiate firms along multiple dimensions. The results, which are robust to most challenges, suggest a small but significant "diversity bonus" for all types of London firms. First, companies with diverse management are more likely to introduce new product innovations than are those with homogeneous "top teams." Second, diversity is particularly important for reaching international markets and serving London's cosmopolitan population. Third, migrant status has positive links to entrepreneurship. Overall, the results provide some support for claims that diversity is an economic asset, as well as a social benefit.