Obama to Name Major League Affirmative Action Advocate to Council of Economic Advisers

President Barack Obama will appoint Sandra Black, professor of economics at the University of Texas at Austin, to join the three-member White House Council of Economic Advisers,.

reports WSJ

Sandra Black

Black holds the Audre and Bernard Rapoport Centennial Chair in Economics and Public Affairs and is a Professor of Economics.  She received her B.A. from UC Berkeley and her Ph.D. in Economics from Harvard University.  Since that time, she worked as an Economist at the Federal Reserve Bank of New York, and an Assistant, Associate, and ultimately Professor in the Department of Economics at UCLA before arriving at the University of Texas, Austin in 2010. She currently is the Editor of the Journal of Human Resources, a Research Associate at the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), and a Research Affiliate at IZA.

According to the University of Texas, Austin, her research focuses on the role of early life experiences on the long-run outcomes of children, as well as issues of gender and discrimination.

In a paper she co-wrote, Breaking the Glass Ceiling? The Effect of Board Quotas on Female Labor Market Outcomes in Norway, the conclusion of the paper was:

This paper provides what we believe is the first effort to assess whether gender quotas in
business can be an effective tool to reduce gender disparities in the corporate sector. The
Norwegian approach, focused on mandating gender diversity on corporate boards, is important to study since it is being adopted by more and more countries throughout Europe. Our study of the “mechanical” effect of the quota offers optimistic news for supporters of this affirmative action policy.

Which, of course, assumes the absurd idea that there is rampant sexual discrimination in the first place. See:Discrimination,Affirmative Action,and Equal Opportunity for a rebuttal to this notion.

In a paper she co-authored, Efficacy vs. Equity:  What Happens When States Tinker with College Admissions in a Race-Blind Era?, the conclusion reached was:

Affirmative action admissions policies can accommodate different relationships between measures and outcomes across racial and ethnic groups by applying different standards. However, these accommodations, which are supported by the results here, are no longer legal in public university admissions....

Our results suggest that the fewer “objective” criteria that are used in admissions, the less inequity will be introduced. In the case of Texas, efficiency gains from adding criteria come at a very high cost of dramatic reductions in equity. Admissions officers should use caution in applying minimum standards across the board when diversity continues to be a goal of admissions.

Bottom line: The type of crazed lefty views you would expect from someone who has spent too much time at Berkeley and who thinks the world can be centrally planned.

   -RW