Biography:
Dr. Zachary Bleemer is a labor economist who specializes in the economics of higher education. In his work, he combines rigorous data analysis with quasi-experimental research designs to examine the long-run ramifications of young Americans' post-secondary education and specialization decisions, with a particular focus on university policies that promote socioeconomic mobility. He has published studies of affirmative action and other access-oriented admissions policies, the consequences of student debt accumulation, widespread misinformation about the costs and benefits of higher education, and state disinvestment from public higher education in outlets including the Quarterly Journal of Economics and the American Economic Journal: Applied Economics.
Zach earned his Ph.D. in economics from UC Berkeley and his B.A. in Economics, Mathematics, and Philosophy from Amherst College.
Student Lecture: 19 September 2024
Who Merits an Elite College Education?
High-quality higher education has been increasingly allocated to students based on their measured academic preparation. This talk will summarize a series of studies examining the efficiency and equity ramifications of meritocracy in the context of undergraduate admissions and college major access.
Faculty Lecture: 20 September 2024
Affirmative Action and Racial Integration, joint with Gerald Jaynes
Is long-run social integration and cohesion between racial groups more likely following exposure to racially diverse and/or more academically-matched universities? We study California’s Proposition 209, a 1998 affirmative action ban that decreased Black, Hispanic, and Native American (URM) undergraduate enrollment by 40 percent at UC Berkeley; decreased URM enrollment at University of California law, business, and medical schools by about 50 percent; and improved cross-race academic match at other undergraduate UC campuses. Our analysis combines novel administrative data linking most 1988-2008 UC students to their 2020s local residential ethnic composition, spousal race, and workplace characteristics with between- and within-institution difference-in-difference designs. We find that neither racial diversity nor cross-race academic match meaningfully affects non-URM students' longitudinal racial integration. Affirmative action does not affect the share of medical graduates practicing in minority communities. We investigate mechanisms by exploiting the UC Berkeley dormitory lottery, finding only weak relationships between URM roommate assignment and non-URM students' long-run racial integration.