Affirmative Action in College Admission Decisions and the Distribution of Human Capital

This paper presents a model consisting of a large number of students who differ by race and by the stock of human capital of their parents. Students choose effort levels in high school and college. College attendance is dependent on the student’s decision to attend college and the college’s decision to accept the student. Colleges in this paper enact admission policies that are not colorblind. The computational experiments reveal that under affirmative action, some minority students who were already attending college without affirmative action acquire less human capital because affirmative action reduces their incentive to exert effort in high school.