Race Discrimination: An Economic Perspective
Open accessAbstract
We review the empirical literature in economics on discrimination in the labor market and criminal justice system, focusing primarily on discrimination by race. We then discuss theoretical models of taste-based discrimination, particularly models of frictional labor markets and models of statistical discrimination, including recent work on invalid statistical discrimination. We explore and evaluate the evidence for and against these theories. Although there is substantial evidence of the existence of discrimination, little is known about the extent to which disparities are driven by discrimination. Finally, we argue that economists miss the important self-enforcing relationship between disparities and discrimination and the effect of disparities in one domain on discrimination in other domains.
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Discrimination works as a system, with discrimination in each institution potentially reinforcing disparities and discrimination in other institutions-and with the effects in some cases potentially reaching across generations.
“As ref. 21 suggests, “discrimination works as a system, with discrimination in each institution potentially reinforcing disparities and discrimination in other institutions—and with the effects in some cases potentially reaching across generations.””
From AI–AI bias: Large language models favor communications generated by large language models (2025) · cites this paper as [21]
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- Authors
- Lang, K., & Spitzer, A. K.-L.
- Affiliations
- Boston University (US)
- Mathematica Policy Research (US)
- ORCID
- Lang, Kevin
- Venue
- Journal of Economic Perspectives
- Publisher
- American Economic Association
- Published
- 2020-05-01
- Volume
- 34
- Issue
- 2
- Pages
- 68-89
- ISSN
- 0895-3309 (ISSN-L)
- OpenAlex
- W3023101082
- Cited by
- 220
- References
- 36
- Citations by year
- 2026: 24 · 2025: 43 · 2024: 52 · 2023: 42 · 2022: 31 · 2021: 19 · 2020: 8 · 2019: 1
- FWCI
- 33.75
- Type
- journal article
- Language
- en
- Open access
- diamond
- doi.org
- Locations
- The Journal of Economic Perspectives (publishedVersion)
- RePEc: Research Papers in Economics (submittedVersion)
- Topics
- Social Sciences › Sociology and Political Science › Names, Identity, and Discrimination Research
- Social Sciences › Economics, Econometrics and Finance › Economics and Econometrics › Labor market dynamics and wage inequality
- Social Sciences › Law › Discrimination and Equality Law
- Keywords
- racial discrimination, labor market discrimination, taste discrimination, statistical discrimination, frictional labor market, racial disparities
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