The Price of Prejudice

Autor(en)
Morten Hedegaard, Jean-Robert Tyran
Abstrakt

We present a new type of field experiment to investigate ethnic prejudice in the workplace. Our design allows us to study how potential discriminators respond to changes in the cost of discrimination. We find that ethnic discrimination is common but highly responsive to the “price of prejudice”, i.e. to the opportunity cost of choosing a less productive worker on ethnic grounds. Discriminators are on average willing to forego 8 percent of their earnings to avoid a co-worker of the other ethnic type. The evidence suggests that animus rather than statistical discrimination explains observed behavior.

Organisation(en)
Institut für Volkswirtschaftslehre, Wiener Zentrum für Experimentelle Wirtschaftsforschung
Externe Organisation(en)
University of Copenhagen
Journal
American Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Band
10
Seiten
40-63
Anzahl der Seiten
24
ISSN
1945-7782
DOI
https://doi.org/10.1257/app.20150241
Publikationsdatum
01-2018
Peer-reviewed
Ja
ÖFOS 2012
502002 Arbeitsmarkttheorie
Schlagwörter
ASJC Scopus Sachgebiete
Economics, Econometrics and Finance(all)
Link zum Portal
https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/de/publications/the-price-of-prejudice(32b9cc68-73dd-4fe4-bbd0-18df66256d04).html