The spillover effects of affirmative action on competitiveness and unethical behavior

Abstract

Affirmative Action policies have developed in various contexts to facilitate the access to more rewarding positions of groups of the population that suffer from lower status in society, most of the time by means of quotas. Many aim at reducing the gender gap in the access to the boards of large companies or to parliaments, but examples can be found also in the context of highly segmented societies, as in India where the objective is to reduce the gap between castes in the access to higher education and jobs.