IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/zur/iewwpx/348.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Cultural transmission and discrimination

Author

Listed:
  • Maria Sáez-Marti
  • Yves Zenou

Abstract

Workers can have good or bad work habits. These traits are transmitted from one generation to the next through a learning and imitation process, which depends on parents' investment in the trait and the social environment where children live. We show that if a suciently high proportion of employers have taste-based prejudices against minority workers, their prejudices are always self- fulfilled in steady state and minority workers end up having, on average, worse work habits than majority workers. This leads to a ghetto culture. Affirmative Action can improve the welfare of minorities whereas integration can be beneficial to minority workers but detrimental to workers from the majority group.

Suggested Citation

  • Maria Sáez-Marti & Yves Zenou, 2007. "Cultural transmission and discrimination," IEW - Working Papers 348, Institute for Empirical Research in Economics - University of Zurich, revised Apr 2012.
    • Handle: RePEc:zur:iewwpx:348
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://www.zora.uzh.ch/id/eprint/52302/4/iewwp348.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

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


    Cited by:

    1. Pettifor, Hazel & Wilson, Charlie, 2020. "Low carbon innovations for mobility, food, homes and energy: A synthesis of consumer attributes," Renewable and Sustainable Energy Reviews, Elsevier, vol. 130(C).
    2. Spiro, Daniel, 2020. "Multigenerational transmission of culture," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 188(C).
    3. Fabrizio Adriani & Silvia Sonderegger, 2018. "Signaling about Norms: Socialization under Strategic Uncertainty," Scandinavian Journal of Economics, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 120(3), pages 685-716, July.
    4. Florent Dubois & Christophe Muller, 2017. "Decomposing Well-being Measures in South Africa: The Contribution of Residential Segregation to Income Distribution," AMSE Working Papers 1719, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    5. Florent Dubois, 2017. "The Sources of Segregation," AMSE Working Papers 1720, Aix-Marseille School of Economics, France.
    6. Lorenzo Cerda Planas, 2015. "The Evolution of "Kantian Trait": Inferring from the Dictator Game," Université Paris1 Panthéon-Sorbonne (Post-Print and Working Papers) halshs-01163937, HAL.
    7. Francesca Lipari & Massimo Stella & Alberto Antonioni, 2019. "Investigating Peer and Sorting Effects within an Adaptive Multiplex Network Model," Games, MDPI, vol. 10(2), pages 1-12, March.
    8. Bervoets, Sebastian & Zenou, Yves, 2017. "Intergenerational correlation and social interactions in education," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 92(C), pages 13-30.
    9. Matthias Doepke & Fabrizio Zilibotti, 2017. "Parenting With Style: Altruism and Paternalism in Intergenerational Preference Transmission," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 85, pages 1331-1371, September.
    10. Zenou, Yves, 2013. "Spatial versus social mismatch," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 74(C), pages 113-132.
    11. Jean-Baptiste Michau, 2013. "Unemployment Insurance And Cultural Transmission: Theory And Application To European Unemployment," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 11(6), pages 1320-1347, December.
    12. Bezin, Emeline & Moizeau, Fabien, 2017. "Cultural dynamics, social mobility and urban segregation," Journal of Urban Economics, Elsevier, vol. 99(C), pages 173-187.
    13. Adriani, Fabrizio & Matheson, Jesse A. & Sonderegger, Silvia, 2018. "Teaching by example and induced beliefs in a model of cultural transmission," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 145(C), pages 511-529.
    14. Boris Gershman, 2016. "Long-Run Development and the New Cultural Economics," Working Papers 2016-06, American University, Department of Economics.
    15. Lorenzo Cerda Planas, 2015. "The Evolution of a "Kantian Trait": Inferring from the Dictator Game," Documents de travail du Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne 15032, Université Panthéon-Sorbonne (Paris 1), Centre d'Economie de la Sorbonne.
    16. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli & Jiabin Wu, 2016. "The Interplay of Cultural Aversion and Assortativity for the Emergence of Cooperation," Center for Economic Research (RECent) 121, University of Modena and Reggio E., Dept. of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    17. Forquesato, Pedro, 2016. "Social norms of work ethic and incentives in organizations," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 128(C), pages 231-250.
    18. Gradstein, Mark & Justman, Moshe, 2018. "Diversity and Growth," IZA Discussion Papers 11553, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    19. Lorenzo Cerda Planas, 2015. "The Evolution of "Kantian Trait": Inferring from the Dictator Game," Post-Print halshs-01163937, HAL.
    20. Carvalho, Jean-Paul & Koyama, Mark, 2013. "Resisting Education," MPRA Paper 48048, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    21. Bethencourt, Carlos & Kunze, Lars, 2014. "On the intergenerational nature of criminal behavior," MPRA Paper 58344, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    22. Ennio Bilancini & Leonardo Boncinelli & Jiabin Wuz, 2016. "The Interplay of Cultural Aversion and Assortativity for the Emergence of Cooperation," Department of Economics 0084, University of Modena and Reggio E., Faculty of Economics "Marco Biagi".
    23. Zenou, Yves & Del Bello, Carlo & Panebianco, Fabrizio & Verdier, Thierry, 2016. "Cultural Transmission and Socialization Spillovers in Education," CEPR Discussion Papers 11419, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    24. Bilancini, Ennio & Boncinelli, Leonardo & Wu, Jiabin, 2018. "The interplay of cultural intolerance and action-assortativity for the emergence of cooperation and homophily," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 102(C), pages 1-18.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Ghetto culture; overlapping generations; rational expectations; multiple equilibria; peer effects;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J15 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Demographic Economics - - - Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    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:zur:iewwpx:348. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: Severin Oswald (email available below). General contact details of provider: .

    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.