Related papers: Complementarity in Demand-side Variables and Educa…

We consider the problem of designing affirmative action policies for selecting the top-k candidates from a pool of applicants. We assume that for each candidate we have socio-demographic attributes and a series of variables that serve as…

We present a stylized model with feedback loops for the evolution of a population's wealth over generations. Individuals have both talent and wealth: talent is a random variable distributed identically for everyone, but wealth is a random…

Biases with respect to socially-salient attributes of individuals have been well documented in evaluation processes used in settings such as admissions and hiring. We view such an evaluation process as a transformation of a distribution of…

Can proximity make friendships more diverse? To address this question, we propose a learning-driven friendship formation model to study how proximity and similarity influence the likelihood of forming social connections. The model predicts…

In sequential decision-making problems involving sensitive attributes like race and gender, reinforcement learning (RL) agents must carefully consider long-term fairness while maximizing returns. Recent works have proposed many different…

We study a complementarity game as a systematic tool for the investigation of the interplay between individual optimization and population effects and for the comparison of different strategy and learning schemes. The game randomly pairs…

There are clear benefits associated with a particular consumer choice for many current markets. For example, as we consider here, some products might carry environmental or `green' benefits. Some consumers might value these benefits while…

With the increasing importance of information and communication technologies in access to basic services like education and health, the question of the digital divide based on caste assumes importance in India where large socioeconomic…

Many studies have analyzed how variability in reproductive success affects fitness. However, each study tends to focus on a particular problem, leaving unclear the overall structure of variability in populations. This fractured conceptual…

We propose a framework to assess how to optimally sort and grade students of heterogenous ability. Potential employers face uncertainty regarding an individual's productive value. Knowing which school an individual went to is useful for two…

In science as elsewhere, attention is a limited resource and scientists compete with one another to produce the most exciting, novel and impactful results. We develop a game-theoretic model to explore how such competition influences the…

In this study, we make use of empirically observed occupational stratification patterns, in order to identify the relationship between education and social mobility of individuals - the latter is approximated by the social distance of an…

Recent studies have found evidence of a negative association between economic complexity and inequality at the country level. Moreover, evidence suggests that sophisticated economies tend to outsource products that are less desirable (e.g.…

A competitive learning model was introduced in Ref. 1 (A. Mehta and J. M. Luck, Phys. Rev. E 60, 5, 1999), in which the learning is outcome-related. Every individual chooses between a pair of existing strategies or types, guided by a…

An evolutionary model for emergence of diversity in language is developed. We investigated the effects of two real life observations, namely, people prefer people that they communicate with well, and people interact with people that are…

Standard intergenerational measures have been shown to understate the long-run persistence of socioeconomic advantages in developed countries. We study theoretically and empirically whether this pattern extends to less developed settings,…

Machine learning models are often used to make predictions about admissions process outcomes, such as for colleges or jobs. However, such decision processes differ substantially from the conventional machine learning paradigm. Because…

Selective regression allows abstention from prediction if the confidence to make an accurate prediction is not sufficient. In general, by allowing a reject option, one expects the performance of a regression model to increase at the cost of…

Social and political polarization is a significant source of conflict and poor governance in many societies. Thus, understanding its causes has become a priority of scholars across many disciplines. Here we demonstrate that shifts in…

The promise of equal opportunity is a cornerstone of modern societies, yet upward economic mobility remains out of reach for many. Using a decade of population-scale social network data from the Netherlands, covering over a billion family,…