 On the labor market effects of salience of ethnic/racial disputesK. Kıvanç Aköz, Kerim Arin and Christina Zenker Journal of Public Economic Theory, 2022, vol. 24, issue 2, 348-361 Abstract: An increase in the salience of ethnic/racial (E/R) disputes often signifies a shift in the E/R status quo of a society. We present a labor market model where matching frictions are higher for the E/R minority due to labor market discrimination and the unemployment insurance benefits are determined via competitive elections. We hypothesize that a reduction in labor market discrimination, possibly because of its salience, shifts the unemployment from the minority to the majority, leading to a drop in the unemployment rate among the black minority, and consequently the unemployment insurance they receive. Nevertheless, the total unemployment insurance benefit may increase because the median voter, who is a member of the majority, prefers a higher level of unemployment insurance. To empirically test our hypothesis, we constructed a novel, news‐based, and time‐varying measure of E/R discrimination salience for the US and show that unemployment insurance benefits to the black minority decreases in response to an increase in our measure. Date: 2022 Downloads: (external link) Related works: Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:bla:jpbect:v:24:y:2022:i:2:p:348-361 Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from Access Statistics for this article Journal of Public Economic Theory is currently edited by Rabah Amir, Gareth Myles and Myrna Wooders More articles in Journal of Public Economic Theory from Association for Public Economic Theory Contact information at EDIRC. |
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