IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/yaleco/3.html

Employer Learning, Statistical Discrimination and Occupational Attainment

Author

Listed:
  • Altonjii, Joseph G.

    (Yale U)

Abstract

I examine the implications of employer learning and statistical discrimination for initial employment rates, wages, and occupational attainment and for wage growth and occupational change over a career using a model in which the sensitivity of productivity to worker skill is increasing in the skill requirements of the job and in which employers learn about worker skill more rapidly in high skill jobs. I show that statistical discrimination influences initial employment rates, wage levels and job type, and that employers' initial estimate of productivity influences wage growth even in an environment in which access to training is not an issue. The implication is that the market may be slow to learn that a worker is highly skilled if worker's best early job opportunity given the information available to employers is a low skill level job that reveals little about the worker's talent.

Suggested Citation

  • Altonjii, Joseph G., 2005. "Employer Learning, Statistical Discrimination and Occupational Attainment," Working Papers 3, Yale University, Department of Economics.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:yaleco:3
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://economics.yale.edu/sites/default/files/files/Working-Papers/wp000/ddp0003.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kevin Lang, 1986. "A Language Theory of Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 101(2), pages 363-382.
    2. 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.
    3. O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), 1999. "Handbook of Labor Economics," Handbook of Labor Economics, Elsevier, edition 1, volume 3, number 3.
    4. Fabian Lange, 2005. "The Returns to Schooling and Ability During the Early Career: Evidence on Employer Learning and Post-School Investment," 2005 Meeting Papers 253, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    5. Coate, Stephen & Loury, Glenn C, 1993. "Will Affirmative-Action Policies Eliminate Negative Stereotypes?," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 83(5), pages 1220-1240, December.
    6. Joseph G. Altonji & Charles R. Pierret, 2001. "Employer Learning and Statistical Discrimination," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 116(1), pages 313-350.
    7. O'Flaherty, Brendan & Siow, Aloysius, 1995. "Up-or-Out Rules in the Market for Lawyers," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 13(4), pages 709-735, October.
    8. Joseph G. Altonji & Charles R. Pierret, 1998. "Employer Learning and the Signalling Value of Education," Palgrave Macmillan Books, in: Isao Ohashi & Toshiaki Tachibanaki (ed.), Internal Labour Markets, Incentives and Employment, chapter 8, pages 159-195, Palgrave Macmillan.
    9. Lundberg, Shelly J & Startz, Richard, 1983. "Private Discrimination and Social Intervention in Competitive Labor Markets," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 73(3), pages 340-347, June.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Francesco Cinnirella & Joachim Winter, 2009. "Size Matters! Body Height and Labor Market Discrimination: A Cross-European Analysis," CESifo Working Paper Series 2733, CESifo.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Balsa, Ana I. & McGuire, Thomas G., 2001. "Statistical discrimination in health care," Journal of Health Economics, Elsevier, vol. 20(6), pages 881-907, November.
    2. Ruzzier, Christian A. & Woo, Marcelo D., 2023. "Discrimination with inaccurate beliefs and confirmation bias," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 210(C), pages 379-390.
    3. Roland G. Fryer, Jr. & Devah Pager & Jörg L. Spenkuch, 2013. "Racial Disparities in Job Finding and Offered Wages," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 56(3), pages 633-689.
    4. Nathalie Havet, 2004. "Écarts salariaux et disparités professionnelles entre sexes : développements théoriques et validité empirique," L'Actualité Economique, Société Canadienne de Science Economique, vol. 80(1), pages 5-39.
    5. Eleonora Patacchini & Giuseppe Ragusa & Yves Zenou, 2015. "Unexplored dimensions of discrimination in Europe: homosexuality and physical appearance," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 28(4), pages 1045-1073, October.
    6. Luojia Hu & Christopher Taber, 2011. "Displacement, Asymmetric Information, and HeterogeneousHuman Capital," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 29(1), pages 113-152, January.
    7. Stéphane Carcillo & Etienne Wasmer, 2003. "Bilateral Worker-Firm Training Decisions and an Application to Discrimination," SciencePo Working papers hal-01018171, HAL.
    8. Sue H. Mialon, 2024. "Inherited inequality and discrimination," LABOUR, CEIS, vol. 38(2), pages 256-277, June.
    9. Levitt, Steven D, 2004. "Testing Theories of Discrimination: Evidence from Weakest Link," Journal of Law and Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 47(2), pages 431-452, October.
    10. Barr & Oduro, Abena, 2000. "Ethnicity and wage determination in Ghana," Policy Research Working Paper Series 2506, The World Bank.
    11. Jed DeVaro & Suman Ghosh & Cindy Zoghi, 2018. "Job Characteristics and Labor Market Discrimination in Promotions," Industrial Relations: A Journal of Economy and Society, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 389-434, July.
    12. Paul Frijters & Michael A. Shields & Stephen Wheatley Price & Nikolaos Theodoropoulos, 2006. "Testing for Employee Discrimination in Britain using Matched Employer-Employee Data," University of Cyprus Working Papers in Economics 8-2006, University of Cyprus Department of Economics.
    13. Heinrich, Tobias, 2013. "Endogenous negative stereotypes: A similarity-based approach," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 45-54.
    14. Lepage, Louis Pierre, 2020. "Endogenous learning and the persistence of employer biases in the labor market," CLEF Working Paper Series 24, Canadian Labour Economics Forum (CLEF), University of Waterloo.
    15. Joshua C. Pinkston, 2006. "A Test of Screening Discrimination with Employer Learning," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 59(2), pages 267-284, January.
    16. David Neumark & Harry Holzer, 2000. "Assessing Affirmative Action," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 38(3), pages 483-568, September.
    17. repec:spo:wpecon:info:hdl:2441/8941 is not listed on IDEAS
    18. Hu, Luojia & Taber, Christopher, 2005. "Layoffs, Lemons, Race and Gender," IZA Discussion Papers 1702, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Castro Campos, Bente, 2013. "Human capital differences or labor market discrimination? The occupational outcomes of ethnic minorities in rural Guizhou (China)," Studies on the Agricultural and Food Sector in Transition Economies, Leibniz Institute of Agricultural Development in Transition Economies (IAMO), volume 73, number 73.
    20. Stéphane Carcillo & Etienne Wasmer, 2003. "Bilateral Worker-Firm Training Decisions and an Application to Discrimination," Annals of Economics and Statistics, GENES, issue 71-72, pages 293-315.
    21. Frijters, Paul & Shields, Michael A. & Theodoropoulos, Nikolaos & Wheatley Price, Stephen, 2003. "Testing for Employee Discrimination Using Matched Employer-Employee Data: Theory and Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 807, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).

    More about this item

    JEL classification:

    • L11 - Industrial Organization - - Market Structure, Firm Strategy, and Market Performance - - - Production, Pricing, and Market Structure; Size Distribution of Firms

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:ecl:yaleco:3. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    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 CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc 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 RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/edyalus.html .

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

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.