Meritocracy versus diversity

Abstract

A college or firm makes admissions or hiring decisions for which each candidate is characterized by priority ranking and type, which might depend on race, gender, or socioeconomic status. The admissions or hiring committee faces a tradeoff between meritocracy and diversity: Although a merit-first choice rule might admit candidates of the same type, a diversity-first choice rule might be unfair because of priority violations. To formalize this tradeoff, we introduce a measure of meritocracy and a measure of diversity for choice rules. A choice rule that uses both reserves and quotas can be regarded as a compromise and as a generalization of the two extreme rules. The first result is comparative statics for this class of choice rules: We demonstrate that as parameters change and the choice rule becomes more meritorious, the rule also becomes less diverse. The second result is a characterization of the choice rule, which might help admissions or hiring committees to formulate their policies.