Disparate Treatment: Theories and Evidence

差别待遇：理论和证据

• 批准号: 0422863
• 负责人: Petra Todd
• 金额: --
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Continuing grant
• 财政年份: 2004
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2004-07-15 至 2008-06-30
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=0422863&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Disparate; Treatment; Theories; Evidence

Racial and gender disparities have been at the forefront of social and cultural discourse in the US for over half a century. This research has two distinct projects that contribute to a deeper understanding of the sources of disparate treatment and how to remedy it. The first project studies disparate treatment in the context of law enforcement. Previous research on law enforcement focuses on explaining discrimination based on observable characteristics, but this project shows that disparities in treatment need not be related to observable differences. The research develops a theoretical model in which minimizing crime may require a subgroup be policed more intensely within a group of observably identical individuals. The analysis suggests that the identity of individuals subjected to more intense policing may be rotated over time, so that over time the overall impact of policing is distributed equally. This theory can help achieve a more comprehensive understanding of the trade-off between fairness and efficiency. The analysis is also applicable to other settings such as tax auditing, and it affords comparative-statics results. The theory is used to analyze data on highway speeding and to compute the benefit, in terms of lives saved, of a marginal increase in police resources. The modeling methods developed as part of this project and the estimates produce will be useful for analyzing the effectiveness of policies that reduce unsafe driving and therefore accidents.The second project concerns match complementarities, mentoring and role model effects. These effects are often used to provide a rationale for affirmative action (itself a form of disparate treatment). While there has been much discussion in education, sociology, economics and psychology about mentoring and role model effects, these effects have proved difficult to demonstrate quantitatively partly to lack of detailed data to control for the endogenous nature of the matching process. This project will study matching effects in the context of higher education. A data set is constructed that allows estimation of the benefit of pairing students and instructors by race, ethnicity and gender. The estimation approach takes advantage of randomization in the process by which students are assigned to instructors. By gathering comprehensive data on the types of interactions that take place between students and instructors, the project also provides insights into the channels through which mentoring and role model effects take place. The goal of this second project is to establish the notion of mentoring and role model effects on a firm experimental basis. This research will provide a better understanding of the effects of disparate treatment.

种族和性别差异一直处于美国社会和文化话语的最前沿，已有半个多世纪。这项研究有两个不同的项目，有助于更深入地了解不同治疗的来源以及如何纠正它。第一个项目在执法方面研究不同的治疗方法。先前对执法的研究重点是基于可观察的特征来解释歧视，但该项目表明，治疗中的差异不必与可观察的差异有关。该研究开发了一种理论模型，在该模型中，最小化犯罪可能需要在一组相同的个体中更强烈地监管子组。分析表明，经过更激烈的警务的个体的身份可能会随着时间的流逝而旋转，因此随着时间的推移，警务的总体影响平均分布。该理论可以帮助对公平与效率之间的权衡得出更全面的理解。该分析还适用于其他设置，例如税收审计，并提供了比较统计结果。该理论用于分析有关高速公路超速行动的数据，并在拯救的生命方面计算了警察资源的边缘增长。作为该项目的一部分开发的建模方法，估计产生的产品将有助于分析减少不安全驾驶并因此导致事故的政策的有效性。第二个项目涉及匹配互补性，指导和榜样效应。这些效果通常用于提供平权行动的基本原理（本身是一种不同的治疗形式）。尽管在教育，社会学，经济学和心理学上就指导和榜样效应进行了很多讨论，但事实证明，这些效应很难在定量上证明缺乏详细的数据来控制匹配过程的内源性性质。该项目将在高等教育的背景下研究匹配效果。构建了一个数据集，该数据集允许根据种族，种族和性别估算配对学生和讲师的好处。估计方法在将学生分配给讲师的过程中利用随机化。通过收集有关学生与讲师之间发生的互动类型的全面数据，该项目还提供了有关指导和榜样效果的渠道的见解。第二个项目的目的是在牢固的实验基础上建立指导和榜样效应的概念。 这项研究将更好地了解不同治疗的影响。