Statistical Discrimination and the Distribution of Wages

Prashant Bharadwaj, Rahul Deb and Ludovic Renou

No 32562, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We characterize the conditions under which the wage distributions for two groups are consistent with a general model of statistical discrimination. We adapt this theoretical characterization to develop a novel empirical test, the rejection of which we interpret as evidence of taste-based discrimination. In doing so, we provide a theoretical foundation via which the wage structure effect in the decomposition of wage distributions can be interpreted as evidence of taste-based discrimination. We provide a proof of concept application using Census and NLSY-79 data, which suggests taste-based discrimination at work against Black male workers in several broad occupation categories.

JEL-codes: J01 J7 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024-06
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32562.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nbr:nberwo:32562

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w32562

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().