The price of prejudice

Research output: Contribution to journalJournal articleResearchpeer-review

We present a new type of field experiment to investigate ethnic prejudice in the workplace. Our design allows us to study how potential discriminators respond to changes in the cost of discrimination. We find that ethnic discrimination is common but highly responsive to the “price of prejudice”, i.e. to the opportunity cost of choosing a less productive worker on ethnic grounds. Discriminators are on average willing to forego 8 percent of their earnings to avoid a co-worker of the other ethnic type. The evidence suggests that animus rather than statistical discrimination explains observed behavior.
Original languageEnglish
JournalAmerican Economic Journal: Applied Economics
Volume10
Issue number1
Pages (from-to)40-63
Number of pages24
ISSN1945-7782
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - Jan 2018

ID: 222751291