IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/mil/wpdepa/2003-15.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Discrimination and workers' expectations

Author

Listed:
  • Antonio Filippin

Abstract

The paper explores the role of workers' expectations as an original explanation for the puzzling long run persistence of observed discrimination against some minorities in the labor market. A game of incomplete information is presented, showing that ex ante identical groups of workers may be characterized by unequal outcomes in equilibrium due to their different beliefs, even though discriminatory tastes and statistical discrimination by employers have disappeared. Wrong beliefs of being discriminated against are self-confirming in this circumstance, being the ultimate cause of a lower percentage of promotions which supports these wrong beliefs.

Suggested Citation

  • Antonio Filippin, 2003. "Discrimination and workers' expectations," Departmental Working Papers 2003-15, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    • Handle: RePEc:mil:wpdepa:2003-15
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://wp.demm.unimi.it/files/wp/2003/DEMM-2003_015wp.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lazear, Edward P & Rosen, Sherwin, 1981. "Rank-Order Tournaments as Optimum Labor Contracts," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 89(5), pages 841-864, October.
    2. Andrew Schotter & Keith Weigelt, 1992. "Asymmetric Tournaments, Equal Opportunity Laws, and Affirmative Action: Some Experimental Results," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 107(2), pages 511-539.
    3. Filippin, Antonio & Ichino, Andrea, 2005. "Gender wage gap in expectations and realizations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 125-145, February.
    4. Jacob Mincer & Solomon Polachek, 1974. "Family Investments in Human Capital: Earnings of Women," NBER Chapters, in: Marriage, Family, Human Capital, and Fertility, pages 76-110, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Dan Kovenock & Michael R. Baye & Casper G. de Vries, 1996. "The all-pay auction with complete information (*)," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 8(2), pages 291-305.
    6. Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K, 1993. "Self-Confirming Equilibrium," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 61(3), pages 523-545, May.
    7. Antonio Filippin, 2003. "Discrimination and workers' expectations: experimental evidence," Departmental Working Papers 2003-16, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    8. Dekel, Eddie & Fudenberg, Drew & Levine, David K., 2004. "Learning to play Bayesian games," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 46(2), pages 282-303, February.
    9. Moro, Andrea & Norman, Peter, 2004. "A general equilibrium model of statistical discrimination," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 114(1), pages 1-30, January.
    10. Richard Breen & Cecilia Garcia-Penalosa, 2002. "Bayesian Learning and Gender Segregation," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 20(4), pages 899-922, October.
    11. Andrew Schotter & Allan Corns, 1999. "Can Affirmative Action Be Cost Effective? An Experimental Examination of Price-Preference Auctions," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 89(1), pages 291-305, March.
    12. Kenneth Arrow, 1971. "The Theory of Discrimination," Working Papers 403, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    13. O'Keeffe, Mary & Viscusi, W Kip & Zeckhauser, Richard J, 1984. "Economic Contests: Comparative Reward Schemes," Journal of Labor Economics, University of Chicago Press, vol. 2(1), pages 27-56, January.
    14. Phelps, Edmund S, 1972. "The Statistical Theory of Racism and Sexism," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 62(4), pages 659-661, September.
    15. Filippin, Antonio, 2003. "Discrimination and Workers' Expectations: Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 824, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    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. Jaanika Meriküll & Pille Mõtsmees, 2017. "Do you get what you ask? The gender gap in desired and realised wages," International Journal of Manpower, Emerald Group Publishing Limited, vol. 38(6), pages 893-908, September.
    2. Vaishali Zambre, 2018. "The Gender Gap in Wage Expectations: Do Young Women Trade off Higher Wages for Lower Wage Risk?," Discussion Papers of DIW Berlin 1742, DIW Berlin, German Institute for Economic Research.
    3. Antonio Filippin & Francesco Guala, 2013. "Costless discrimination and unequal achievements in an experimental tournament," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 16(3), pages 285-305, September.
    4. Filippin, Antonio & Ichino, Andrea, 2005. "Gender wage gap in expectations and realizations," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 12(1), pages 125-145, February.
    5. Filippin, Antonio, 2003. "Discrimination and Workers' Expectations: Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 824, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    6. Antonio FILIPPIN & Francesco GUALA, 2011. "Costless discrimination and unequal achievements in a labour market experiment," Departmental Working Papers 2011-30, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    7. Antonio Filippin, 2003. "Discrimination and workers' expectations: experimental evidence," Departmental Working Papers 2003-16, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.

    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. Filippin, Antonio, 2003. "Discrimination and Workers' Expectations," IZA Discussion Papers 823, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    2. Filippin, Antonio, 2009. "Can Workers' Expectations Account for the Persistence of Discrimination?," IZA Discussion Papers 4490, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    3. Filippin, Antonio, 2003. "Discrimination and Workers' Expectations: Experimental Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 824, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    4. Antonio Filippin, 2003. "Discrimination and workers' expectations: experimental evidence," Departmental Working Papers 2003-16, Department of Economics, Management and Quantitative Methods at Università degli Studi di Milano.
    5. Kräkel, Matthias & Szech, Nora & von Bieberstein, Frauke, 2014. "Externalities in recruiting," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 107(PA), pages 123-135.
    6. Loukas Balafoutas & E. Glenn Dutcher & Florian Lindner & Dmitry Ryvkin, 2017. "The Optimal Allocation Of Prizes In Tournaments Of Heterogeneous Agents," Economic Inquiry, Western Economic Association International, vol. 55(1), pages 461-478, January.
    7. Subhasish M. Chowdhury & Patricia Esteve‐González & Anwesha Mukherjee, 2023. "Heterogeneity, leveling the playing field, and affirmative action in contests," Southern Economic Journal, John Wiley & Sons, vol. 89(3), pages 924-974, January.
    8. Carolina Castagnetti & Luisa Rosti, 2012. "Unfair tournaments: gender stereotyping and wage discrimination among Italian graduates," DEM Working Papers Series 010, University of Pavia, Department of Economics and Management.
    9. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2019. "A general framework for studying contests," MPRA Paper 97363, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    10. Tilman Klumpp & Xuejuan Su, 2013. "A theory of perceived discrimination," Economic Theory, Springer;Society for the Advancement of Economic Theory (SAET), vol. 53(1), pages 153-180, May.
    11. Charness, Gary & Kuhn, Peter, 2011. "Lab Labor: What Can Labor Economists Learn from the Lab?," Handbook of Labor Economics, in: O. Ashenfelter & D. Card (ed.), Handbook of Labor Economics, edition 1, volume 4, chapter 3, pages 229-330, Elsevier.
    12. Ella Segev & Aner Sela, 2014. "Sequential all-pay auctions with head starts," Social Choice and Welfare, Springer;The Society for Social Choice and Welfare, vol. 43(4), pages 893-923, December.
    13. Christine Harbring, 2006. "The effect of communication in incentive systems-an experimental study," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 27(5), pages 333-353.
    14. Cason, Timothy N. & Masters, William A. & Sheremeta, Roman M., 2020. "Winner-take-all and proportional-prize contests: Theory and experimental results," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 175(C), pages 314-327.
    15. Harbring, Christine & Irlenbusch, Bernd, 2003. "An experimental study on tournament design," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 10(4), pages 443-464, August.
    16. Bastani, Spencer & Giebe, Thomas & Gürtler, Oliver, 2022. "Simple equilibria in general contests," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 134(C), pages 264-280.
    17. Emmanuel Dechenaux & Dan Kovenock & Roman Sheremeta, 2015. "A survey of experimental research on contests, all-pay auctions and tournaments," Experimental Economics, Springer;Economic Science Association, vol. 18(4), pages 609-669, December.
    18. Roland G. Fryer & Matthew O. Jackson, 2002. "Categorical Cognition: A Psychological Model of Categories and Identification in Decision Making," Microeconomics 0211002, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    19. Gill, David & Stone, Rebecca, 2010. "Fairness and desert in tournaments," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 69(2), pages 346-364, July.
    20. Drugov, Mikhail & Ryvkin, Dmitry, 2017. "Biased contests for symmetric players," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 103(C), pages 116-144.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discrimination; Workers' Expectations; Self-Confirming Beliefs.;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J24 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demand and Supply of Labor - - - Human Capital; Skills; Occupational Choice; Labor Productivity
    • D84 - Microeconomics - - Information, Knowledge, and Uncertainty - - - Expectations; Speculations
    • C79 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Game Theory and Bargaining Theory - - - Other

    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:mil:wpdepa:2003-15. 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: DEMM Working Papers (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/damilit.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.