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Do Minorities Misrepresent Their Ethnicity to Avoid Discrimination?

Nikoloz Kudashvili () and Philipp Lergetporer

CERGE-EI Working Papers from The Center for Economic Research and Graduate Education - Economics Institute, Prague

Abstract: Discrimination against minorities is pervasive in many societies, but little is known about strategies minorities may apply to minimize discrimination. In our trust game with 758 highschool students in the country of Georgia, ethnic Georgian trustors discriminate against the ethnic Armenian minority group. We introduce an initial signaling stage to investigate Armenians’ willingness to hide their ethnicity to avoid expected discrimination. 43 percent of Armenian trustees untruthfully signal that they have a Georgian name. Signaling behavior is driven by expected transfers and non-pecuniary motives. This strategic misrepresentation of ethnicity increases Georgian trustors’ expected back transfers and eliminates their discriminatory behavior.

Keywords: discrimination; trust game; experiment; signaling; adolescents (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C91 C93 D83 D90 J15 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-10
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-gth
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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