Many societies aim to design policies based on meritocratic fairness, which involves two principles: (i) paying individuals with equal performance equally (fair equality) and (ii) paying individuals with higher performance more (fair inequality). Yet, often it is impossible to respect both...

Many societies aim to design policies based on meritocratic fairness, which involves two principles: (i) paying individuals with equal performance equally (fair equality) and (ii) paying individuals with higher performance more (fair inequality). Yet, often it is impossible to respect both...

Since the 1990s, global cultural shifts driven by neoliberalism have ushered in significant changes in the institutions of citizenship. This has given rise to an increasingly agentic conception of the individual, with strong meritocratic ideological underpinnings, as manifested across a wide...

Since the 1990s, global cultural shifts driven by neoliberalism have ushered in significant changes in the institutions of citizenship. This has given rise to an increasingly agentic conception of the individual, with strong meritocratic ideological underpinnings, as manifested across a wide...

"For decades the principle of advancing and rewarding individuals on the basis of their talents and initiative-on their merit-has been widely accepted as fair and legitimate in private and public sector institutions. Merit is an especially popular concept among the most selective of these...

A standard conception of meritocracy, reflected in state referenda and the many legal filings against university admissions policies, is that assignment rules should be blind to group identity and monotonic in measures of past accomplishment. We present theoretical arguments and a survey of...

Are labor markets in higher-income countries more meritocratic, in the sense that worker-job matching is based on skills rather than idiosyncratic attributes unrelated to productivity? If so, why? And what are the aggregate consequences? Using internationally comparable data on worker skills and...

"After receiving a PhD in mathematics from MIT, Larry spent three decades working in the tech industry, most recently in the area of speech recognition. And today, in his late-fifties and after a prolonged bout of unemployment, Larry is a cashier at a department store, earning just above the...

Demografische Veränderungen und der Ausbau der lokalen Schulstruktur sollten aus meritokratischer Perspektive keinen Einfluss auf die Bildungschancen haben. In diesem Beitrag zeigen wir jedoch, dass die Wahrscheinlichkeit eines Förderschulbesuchs mit diesen systemischen Aspekten...

Der vorliegende Beitrag setzt sich mit dem Beitrag von Georg Breidenstein „Ungleiche Grundschulen und die meritokratische Fiktion im deutschen Schulsystem“ auseinander. Dabei werden viele Aspekte von Breidenstein unterstrichen. Allerdings wiederspricht der Beitrag in einem zentralen Punkt,...

The merit-vs-diversity balance in university-admissions remains a controversial issue. Statistical analysis of these problems is jeopardized by applicant characteristics observed by admission-officers but unobserved by researchers. Using administrative microdata from the two-stage Cambridge...

Introduction : getting in -- Winners and losers -- "Great because good" : a brief moral history of merit -- The rhetoric of rising -- Credentialism : the last acceptable prejudice -- Success ethics -- The sorting machine -- Recognizing work -- Conclusion.

Frontmatter -- Contents -- Preface -- Acknowledgments -- 1. Write What You Know -- 2. Why Seemingly Trivial Random Events Matter -- 3. How Winner-Take-All Markets Magnify Luck's Role -- 4. Why the Biggest Winners Are Almost Always Lucky -- 5. Why False Beliefs about Luck and Talent Persist -- 6....

"A New York Times economics columnist explores the findings in recent years by scientists who have discovered that chance plays a much larger role in important life situations than most people imagine, showing how a more accurate understanding of this discovery could lead to better, richer and...