Fairlie is a Distinguished Professor at UCLA. He is an Economist and Chair of the Department of Public Policy. He is also a member of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER). He studies a wide range of topics including entrepreneurship, education, labor, racial, gender and caste inequality, information technology, immigration, health, and development. He received a Ph.D. and M.A. from Northwestern University and B.A. with honors from Stanford University, and has held full-time or visiting positions at UC Santa Cruz, Stanford University, Yale University, UC Berkeley, and Australian National University. He has received funding from the National Science Foundation, National Academies, and Russell Sage Foundation as well as numerous government agencies and foundations, and has testified in front of the U.S. Senate, U.S. House of Representatives, U.S. Department of Treasury, and the California State Assembly.

Affirmative action programs are often criticized because of concerns over lower worker productivity. In India, colleges are required to reserve 50 percent of faculty hires from lower caste groups. We collect and analyze data from Indian engineering colleges, some of which randomly assign students to classrooms. We find that reservation category faculty have lower education levels, professorial ranks and experience than general category faculty. Yet, we find no evidence that reservation category faculty provide lower quality instruction or have lower research or administrative productivity. Examining heterogeneity in instructional quality, we also find no evidence of positive reservation category “teacher-like-me” effects.