01353nam a22001457a 4500 525262 525262 240220b ||||| |||| 00| 0 eng d Sethi, Rajiv and Somanathan, Rohini 49993 Meritocracy and representation Journal of Economic Literature 61(3), Sep, 2023: p. 941-957 A standard conception of meritocracy, reflected in state referenda and the many legal filings against university admissions policies, is that selection rules should be blind to group identity and monotonic in measures of past accomplishment. We present theoretical arguments and survey empirical evidence challenging this view. Past accomplishment is often a garbled signal of multiple traits, some of which matter more for future performance than others. In such cases, group identity can be informative as a predictor of success and the increased representation of resource-disadvantaged groups could improve organizational performance. This perspective helps explain some recent empirical findings regarding the efficiency effects of group-contingent selection and moves us toward a conception of meritocracy more closely tied to organizational mission. – Reproduced https://www.aeaweb.org/articles?id=10.1257/jel.20221707 Journal of Economic Literature MIGRATION AR 0 0 ddc 0 0 400319 IIPA IIPA 2024-02-20 61(3), Sep, 2023: p. 941-957 AR131070 2024-02-20 AR