IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/hhs/vxcafo/2006_010.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Discrimination: Believe it and You'll See It

Author

Listed:

Abstract

This paper presents a model where workers’beliefs and expectations about discrimination are significant. Identical firms announce vacancies and starting wages and workers apply to the firm. Workers are of two types, b and g, but identical in productivity. Firms do not prefer a particular type of worker over another. There is however a common belief among all workers that type b workers are discriminated against. This causes type b workers to avoid applying for jobs that offer wages perceived to be too high, since such workers believe that they don’t stand a chance against type g workers. In equilibrium some firms announce a job and high wages thereby attracting only type g workers, while others announce with low wages thereby attracting only type b workers.

Suggested Citation

  • Ahmed, Ali M., 2006. "Discrimination: Believe it and You'll See It," CAFO Working Papers 2006:10, Linnaeus University, Centre for Labour Market Policy Research (CAFO), School of Business and Economics.
  • Handle: RePEc:hhs:vxcafo:2006_010
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://studieportal-elnu.lnu.se/mod/forum/discuss.php?d=368
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Kenneth Burdett & Shouyong Shi & Randall Wright, 2001. "Pricing and Matching with Frictions," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 109(5), pages 1060-1085, October.
    2. 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.
    3. Shouyong Shi, 2002. "A Directed Search Model of Inequality with Heterogeneous Skills and Skill-Biased Technology," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 69(2), pages 467-491.
    4. Peters, Michael, 1984. "Bertrand Equilibrium with Capacity Constraints and Restricted Mobility," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 52(5), pages 1117-1127, September.
    5. Peters, Michael, 1991. "Ex Ante Price Offers in Matching Games Non-steady States," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 59(5), pages 1425-1454, September.
    6. Daron Acemoglu & Robert Shimer, 2000. "Wage and Technology Dispersion," The Review of Economic Studies, Review of Economic Studies Ltd, vol. 67(4), pages 585-607.
    7. James D. Montgomery, 1991. "Equilibrium Wage Dispersion and Interindustry Wage Differentials," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 106(1), pages 163-179.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    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. Ali M. Ahmed, 2008. "‘If You Believe That Discrimination Exists, It Will’*†," Manchester School, University of Manchester, vol. 76(6), pages 613-628, December.
    2. Kennes, John & le Maire, Daniel & Roelsgaard, Sebastian T., 2020. "Equivalence of canonical matching models," Games and Economic Behavior, Elsevier, vol. 124(C), pages 169-182.
    3. John Kennes, 2006. "Competitive Auctions: Theory and Application," Contributions to Economic Analysis, in: Structural Models of Wage and Employment Dynamics, pages 145-168, Emerald Group Publishing Limited.
    4. Philipp Kircher, 2009. "Efficiency of Simultaneous Search," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 117(5), pages 861-913, October.
    5. Basov, Suren & King, Ian & Uren, Lawrence, 2014. "Worker heterogeneity, the job-finding rate, and technical change," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 70(C), pages 159-177.
    6. Lester, Benjamin, 2010. "Directed search with multi-vacancy firms," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(6), pages 2108-2132, November.
    7. Shouyong Shi, 2009. "Directed Search for Equilibrium Wage-Tenure Contracts," Econometrica, Econometric Society, vol. 77(2), pages 561-584, March.
    8. Shi, Shouyong, 2016. "Customer relationship and sales," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 166(C), pages 483-516.
    9. Richard Rogerson & Robert Shimer & Randall Wright, 2004. "Search-Theoretic Models of the Labor Market-A Survey," NBER Working Papers 10655, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    10. Suren Basov & John Ian King & Lawrence Uren, 2010. "The Employed, the Unemployed, and the Unemployable: Directed Search with Worker Heterogeneity," Working Papers 2010.03, School of Economics, La Trobe University.
    11. Ronald Wolthoff, 2010. "Applications and Interviews: A Structural Analysis of Two-Sided Simultaneous Search," 2010 Meeting Papers 114, Society for Economic Dynamics.
    12. Galenianos, Manolis & Kircher, Philipp, 2009. "Directed search with multiple job applications," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 144(2), pages 445-471, March.
    13. Claudio Michelacci & Javier Suarez, 2006. "Incomplete Wage Posting," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 114(6), pages 1098-1123, December.
    14. T. Tony Ke & Yuting Zhu, 2021. "Cheap Talk on Freelance Platforms," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 67(9), pages 5901-5920, September.
    15. Watanabe, Makoto, 2010. "A model of merchants," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 145(5), pages 1865-1889, September.
    16. Bruno Decreuse & André Zylberberg, 2011. "Search Intensity, Directed Search, And The Wage Distribution," Journal of the European Economic Association, European Economic Association, vol. 9(6), pages 1168-1186, December.
    17. King, Ian & Kennes, John & Julien, Benoit, 2001. "Residual Wage Disparity in Directed Search Equilibrium," Working Papers 209, Department of Economics, The University of Auckland.
    18. Mangin, Sephorah, 2017. "A theory of production, matching, and distribution," Journal of Economic Theory, Elsevier, vol. 172(C), pages 376-409.
    19. Watanabe Makoto, 2020. "Middlemen: A Directed Search Equilibrium Approach," The B.E. Journal of Macroeconomics, De Gruyter, vol. 20(2), pages 1-37, June.
    20. Shouyong Shi, 2005. "Frictional Assignment, Part II: Infinite Horizon and Inequality," Review of Economic Dynamics, Elsevier for the Society for Economic Dynamics, vol. 8(1), pages 106-137, January.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    Discrimination; Workers’ beliefs; Directed search;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J60 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Mobility, Unemployment, Vacancies, and Immigrant Workers - - - General
    • J70 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - General

    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:hhs:vxcafo:2006_010. 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: Andreas Mångs (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/cafovse.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.