Advanced Search
MyIDEAS: Login

Employer learning and statistical discrimination

Contents:

Author Info

  • Joseph G. Altonji
  • Charles R. Pierret

Abstract

We show that if firms statistically discriminate among young workers on the basis of easily observable characteristics such as education, then as firms learn about productivity, the coefficients on the easily observed variables should fall, and the coefficients on hard-to-observe correlates of productivity should rise. We find support for this proposition using NLSY79 data on education, the AFQT test, father's education, and wages for young men and their siblings. We find little evidence for statistical discrimination in wages on the basis of race. Our analysis has a wide range of applications in the labor market and elsewhere. © 2000 the President and Fellows of Harvard College and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology

(This abstract was borrowed from another version of this item.)

Download Info

To our knowledge, this item is not available for download. To find whether it is available, there are three options:
1. Check below under "Related research" whether another version of this item is available online.
2. Check on the provider's web page whether it is in fact available.
3. Perform a search for a similarly titled item that would be available.

Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Federal Reserve Bank of Chicago in its series Working Paper Series, Macroeconomic Issues with number WP-97-11.

as in new window
Length:
Date of creation: 1997
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:fip:fedhma:wp-97-11

Contact details of provider:
Postal: P.O. Box 834, 230 South LaSalle Street, Chicago, Illinois 60690-0834
Phone: 312/322-5111
Fax: 312/322-5515
Email:
Web page: http://www.chicagofed.org/
More information through EDIRC

Order Information:
Email:
Web: http://www.chicagofed.org/webpages/publications/print_publication_order_form.cfm

Related research

Keywords: Labor market ; Wages ; Discrimination in employment;

Other versions of this item:

Find related papers by JEL classification:

References

References listed on IDEAS
Please report citation or reference errors to , or , if you are the registered author of the cited work, log in to your RePEc Author Service profile, click on "citations" and make appropriate adjustments.:
as in new window
  1. Gibbons, R. & Katz, L.F., 1989. "Layoffs And Lemons," Working papers 531, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Department of Economics.
  2. Lang, Kevin, 1986. "A Language Theory of Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 101(2), pages 363-82, May.
  3. Joseph G. Altonji & Charles R. Pierret, 1996. "Employer Learning and the Signaling Value of Education," NBER Working Papers 5438, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  4. Farber, Henry S & Gibbons, Robert, 1996. "Learning and Wage Dynamics," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 111(4), pages 1007-47, November.
  5. Murphy, Kevin M & Welch, Finis, 1992. "The Structure of Wages," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(1), pages 285-326, February.
  6. Richard Startz & Lundberg, . "Private Discrimination and Social Intervention in Competitive Labor Markets," Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research Working Papers 19-81, Wharton School Rodney L. White Center for Financial Research.
  7. Harry J. Holzer, 1986. "Search Method Use by Unemployed Youth," NBER Working Papers 1859, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  8. Borjas, George J, 1992. "Ethnic Capital and Intergenerational Mobility," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, MIT Press, vol. 107(1), pages 123-50, February.
  9. Harley Frazis, 1993. "Selection Bias and the Degree Effect," Journal of Human Resources, University of Wisconsin Press, vol. 28(3), pages 538-554.
  10. Jovanovic, Boyan, 1979. "Job Matching and the Theory of Turnover," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 87(5), pages 972-90, October.
  11. Murnane, Richard J & Willett, John B & Levy, Frank, 1995. "The Growing Importance of Cognitive Skills in Wage Determination," The Review of Economics and Statistics, MIT Press, vol. 77(2), pages 251-66, May.
  12. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 1, number 9780226041162, March.
  13. Carmichael, H Lorne, 1989. "Self-Enforcing Contracts, Shirking, and Life Cycle Incentives," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 3(4), pages 65-83, Fall.
  14. Albrecht, James W., 1981. "A procedure for testing the signalling hypothesis," Journal of Public Economics, Elsevier, vol. 15(1), pages 123-132, February.
  15. Edward P. Lazear, 1984. "Raids and Offermatching," NBER Working Papers 1419, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
  16. Joseph G. Altonji & James R. Spletzer, 1991. "Worker characteristics, job characteristics, and the receipt of on-the-job training," Industrial and Labor Relations Review, ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 45(1), pages 58-79, October.
Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

Citations

Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Violence, race, and idle research Ideas
    by Noel Maurer in The Power and the money on 2010-08-07 01:20:21
Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
as in new window

Cited by:
This item has more than 25 citations. To prevent cluttering this page, these citations are listed on a separate page.

Lists

This item is not listed on Wikipedia, on a reading list or among the top items on IDEAS.

Statistics

Access and download statistics

Corrections

When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:fip:fedhma:wp-97-11

For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: (Diane Rosenberger).

If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

If references are entirely missing, you can add them using this form.

If the full references list an item that is present in RePEc, but the system did not link to it, you can help with this form.

If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.