Experience-Based Discrimination: Classroom Games

Heldref Publications, Helen Dwight Reid Educational Foundation, 1319 Eighteenth Street, NW, Washington, DC 20036-1802. Web site: http://www.heldref.org.

Y

11

Teachers

Teaching Methods; Public Policy; Labor Economics; Investment; Educational Games; Social Discrimination; Economics; Equal Opportunities (Jobs); Higher Education; Racial Discrimination

0022-0485

The authors present a simple classroom game in which students are randomly designated as employers, purple workers, or green workers. This environment may generate "statistical" discrimination if workers of one color tend not to invest because they anticipate lower opportunities in the labor market, and these beliefs are self-confirming as employers learn that it is, on average, less profitable to hire workers of that color. Such discriminatory equilibria may arise even when workers are ex-ante identical, and the employer has no prior information regarding potential workers. The exercise typically generates a lively discussion about discrimination and how it may be addressed by alternative public policies. (Contains 5 endnotes.)

Author

7

2005

EJ712891