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Wage Differentials by Race and Sex: The Roles of Taste Discrimination and Labor Market Information
Author(s) -
Neumark David
Publication year - 1999
Publication title -
industrial relations: a journal of economy and society
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
SCImago Journal Rank - 1.61
H-Index - 57
eISSN - 1468-232X
pISSN - 0019-8676
DOI - 10.1111/0019-8676.00135
Subject(s) - statistical discrimination , race (biology) , wage , taste , economics , labour economics , quality (philosophy) , sample (material) , efficiency wage , demographic economics , psychology , sociology , gender studies , philosophy , chemistry , epistemology , chromatography , neuroscience
Using a unique dataset, this article first documents that gaps in starting wages by race and sex persist after accounting for performance on the job. Evidence suggests that simple statistical discrimination, and not just taste discrimination, is partly responsible for race differences in starting wages. But because women's average performance in the sample is higher than men's, simple statistical discrimination cannot explain the sex gap. In more complex models of statistical discrimination, worse information about a group can lower its average wage. Estimates of the quality of labor market information indicate that this may explain women's lower starting wages.