Don't demotivate, discriminate

Jurjen Kamphorst and Otto Swank (swank@few.eur.nl)

No 14-017/VII, Tinbergen Institute Discussion Papers from Tinbergen Institute

Abstract: This discussion paper led to a publication in the American Economic Journal: Microeconomics .

This paper offers a new theory of discrimination in the workplace. We consider a manager who has to assign two tasks to two employees. The manager has superior information about the employees' abilities. We show that besides an equilibrium where the manager does not discriminate, equilibria exist where the manager discriminates in favor of the employee whom the employees expect to be favored. The manager, who has no taste for discrimination, discriminates in order to avoid demotivating the 'favorite'. We show that the non-discriminatory equilibrium is unstable. Yet the manager would prefer to commit not to discriminate.

Keywords: discrimination; confidence management; Bayesian games (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D82 J71 M51 M54 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2014-01-31
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-mic
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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Related works:
Journal Article: Don't Demotivate, Discriminate (2016)
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:tin:wpaper:20140017

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