EcoDisc · Investigating the moral ideals and social norms of economic discrimination

Investigating the moral ideals and social norms of economic discrimination

What do discrimination preferences look like, and what drives individuals to discriminate or refuse to discriminate? This project examines a richer set of discrimination preferences than what exists in the economics literature to improve our understanding of discrimination. The project examines the classical discrimination preferences in the literature of (i) a desire to favor (or harm) a group (often called a taste), and (ii) a desire to maximize one's expected financial earnings through statistical discrimination based on beliefs about group characteristics. It also adapts ideas from an extensive parallel literature showing that moral principles impact economic decisions involving implementing equality and retributing productivity—both standard features of discrimination decisions. That is, in addition to classical preferences, this project studies new preferences against discrimination, which it introduces from a moral principle that protected groups should be treated equally, and a new preference for statistical discrimination, which it takes from a principle that a more productive-on-average group should be retributed. The project first develops a portable methodology to evaluate preferences for and against discrimination (and underlying moral principles) using incentivized experiments. Then, it deploys this methodology to evaluate such preferences among a representative sample of a country along three dimensions central to anti-discrimination laws—ethnicity, gender, and LGBTQ+ status. The project will inform academics and policymakers regarding the extent and drivers of discrimination, and it will serve as the basis for further studies of discrimination.

Data: CORDIS, © European Union