L'économie des discriminations " peut-elle se passer d'une " philosophie économique des discriminations ?

Since the 1950's, Nobel Prize economists such as Akerlof, Arrow, Becker, Heckman, Phelps and Stiglitz have analyzed discrimination in an economic framework, essentially in a "positive" perspective. The two seminal models - Becker's model based on a "taste for discrimination" and Arrow and Phelps' theories of "statistical discrimination" - give two different answers to the implicit question of efficiency. Discrimination is inefficient - by assumption - in Becker's work because it's a "non-monetary cost", whereas discrimination could be efficient - in some cases - in statistical discrimination models. When discrimination is efficient, the normative basis disappears and no political recommendations could be made. The eficiency criterion is not sufficient to analyze discrimination both in a "positive" and in a "normative" perspective. The paper discusses two principles to renew this analysis : 1) individuals make choice using normative criteria ; 2) the non-discrimination principle is lexically prior to an efficiency criterion.