Cultural transmission and discrimination

Maria Sáez-Marti and Yves Zenou
Authors registered in the RePEc Author Service: Simon Haenni

No 348, IEW - Working Papers from Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich

Abstract: Workers can have good or bad work habits. These traits are transmitted from one generation to the next through a learning and imitation process, which depends on parents' investment in the trait and the social environment where children live. We show that if a suciently high proportion of employers have taste-based prejudices against minority workers, their prejudices are always self- fulfilled in steady state and minority workers end up having, on average, worse work habits than majority workers. This leads to a ghetto culture. Affirmative Action can improve the welfare of minorities whereas integration can be beneficial to minority workers but detrimental to workers from the majority group.

Keywords: Ghetto culture; overlapping generations; rational expectations; multiple equilibria; peer effects (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2007-12, Revised 2012-04
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lab and nep-soc
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:zur:iewwpx:348

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