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42 UCLA L. Rev. 1251 (1994-1995)
Testing for Equality: Merit, Efficiency, and the Affirmative Action Debate

handle is hein.journals/uclalr42 and id is 1265 raw text is: TESTING FOR EQUALITY: MERIT, EFFICIENCY, AND THE AFFIRMATIVE ACTION DEBATE Michael Selmi INTRODUCTION . .............................................. 1251 I. THE INFORMATION TESTS PROVIDE ............................ 1256 A. The Relationship Between Employment Tests and Affirmative Action .................................. 1256 B. Assessing the Reliability of Employment Tests ................. 1261 1. The Correlation Coefficient ........................... 1262 2. Are Reported Coefficients Downwardly Biased? ............. 1266 C. The Reliability of Individual Test Scores ..................... 1270 II. AFFIRMATIVE ACTION AND THE PERSISTENCE OF DISCRIMINATION ..... 1277 A. Economic Theories of Discrimination ........................ 1279 1. Taste Discrimination ................................. 1279 2. The Influence of Unconscious Discrimination on the Theory of Taste Discrimination ................... 1284 3. Statistical Discrimination ............................. 1289 4. The Theories Summarized ............................. 1295 B. Affirmative Action as a Response to the Persistence of Inefficient Discrimination .............................. 1296 1. Affirmative Action as a Monitoring Device ................ 1296 2. Affirmative Action and Market Signals ................... 1299 3. Affirmative Action Under the Efficiency Wage Model ........ 1301 III. THE LEGAL IMPLICATIONS .................................... 1309 CONCLUSION.................................................. 1313 INTRODUCTION Embedded deep within the affirmative action debate are two durable assumptions. The first is that affirmative action means that unqualified, or lesser qualified, individuals will be selected over more qualified individuals. This assumption has been central to the Supreme Court's affirmative action * Associate Professor of Law, University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill. A.B. 1983 Stanford University, J.D. 1987 Harvard Law School. I am grateful to Ian Ayres, Jack Boger, John Conley, Jerome Culp, Donald Homstein, Samuel Issacharoff, David Kaye, Ayesha Khan, Molly McUsic, David Peterson, Stewart Schwab, John Stick, Richard Ugelow, Jonathan Walker, and W. Kip Viscusi for their generous and helpful comments on prior drafts of this Article. 1251

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