The traditional model of taste discrimination in labor markets presumes perfect substitution, making it unsuitable for the measurement of discrimination across job assignments. We extend the model to explain cross-assignment discrimination and test it on data from Major League Baseball. A competitive firm with a Generalized Leontief production function fills each job assignment with whites and nonwhites in an environment of customer prejudice. According to the model, cross-assignment discrimination depends upon racial productivity differences, the productivity x prejudice interaction, technology, relative labor supply and racial integration. We find strong evidence of ceteris paribus racial salary differences between hitters and pitchers.
Download Info
To download:
If you experience problems downloading a file, check if you have the
proper application to
view it first. Information about this may be contained
in the File-Format links below. In case of further problems read
the IDEAS help
page. Note that these files are not on the IDEAS
site. Please be patient as the files may be large.
Publisher Info
Paper provided by Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA) in its series IZA Discussion Papers with number
3748.
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.:
Altonji, Joseph G. & Blank, Rebecca M., 1999.
"Race and gender in the labor market,"
Handbook of Labor Economics,
in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 3, chapter 48, pages 3143-3259
Elsevier.
[Downloadable!] (restricted)
Other versions: