The Stability of the American Business Elite

Peter Temin ()

No 110, NBER Historical Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: This paper begins the task of explaining why the American business elite has remained white, male and mostly native-born Protestants for a century, as verified in a previous paper (Temin, 1997). I argue that the evidence is inconsistent with the hypotheses that the stability is due to discrimination on the job or to principal-agent factors. The most likely explanation is that this demographic group makes the best business managers. I suggest that this in turn is not because they are inherently superior, but because they have had access to superior education, a result of past discrimination.

Date: 1998-12
Note: DAE
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Published as Industrial and Corporate Change, Vol. 8 (June 1999): 189-210.

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