Belief Updating, Observability, and Race in the Labor Market

Anna Gifty Opoku-Agyeman and Emma Rackstraw

AEA Papers and Proceedings, 2026, vol. 116, 422-425

Abstract: Inaccurate beliefs about racial gaps in productivity can have wide-ranging implications in the workplace. In an online experiment, we hired a nationally representative sample of Prolific workers to assess the performance of Amazon Mechanical Turk workers on a math test based on stylized resumes. Participants randomly assigned to a Black primary investigator evaluated Black workers as more productive than participants assigned to a White primary investigator. This study provides suggestive evidence on how the racial identity of supervisors may shift perceived racial differences in productivity and how Black leaders can disrupt belief-based discrimination against Black workers.

JEL-codes: D83 J15 J24 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20261085

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