Research on the Economics of Discrimination: New Empirical Methods, Theory and Applications

歧视经济学研究：新的实证方法、理论与应用

• 批准号: 1122902
• 负责人: Hanming Fang
• 金额: $ 27.05万
• 依托单位: University of Pennsylvania
• 依托单位国家: 美国
• 项目类别: Standard Grant
• 财政年份: 2011
• 资助国家: 美国
• 起止时间: 2011-08-15 至 2016-07-31
• 项目状态: 已结题
• 来源: https://www.nsf.gov/awardsearch/showAward?AWD_ID=1122902&HistoricalAwards=false
• 关键词: Research; Economics; Discrimination; New; Empirical

Racial and gender disparities have been documented in many areas, including employment, health care, mortgage and other lending situations, motor vehicle stops and searches as well as in other scenarios of law enforcement such as jury selection, prosecution and sentencing. Two of the most important causes for the observed racial and gender disparities are racial/gender prejudice and statistical discrimination. The term "prejudice'' refers to the presence of a psychic utility differential accrued by "the decision-makers" (i.e. the employers, the doctors, the lenders, the police officers, the judges etc.) in making their decisions on "the treated" (the job applicant, the patient, etc.) when the treated have different races and genders. In contrast, the term "statistical discrimination" refers to a scenario in which the "decision-makers" see "the treated" with dissimilar races and genders differently only because of the legitimate information that is contained in race and gender characteristics. Two important and related questions are addressed. First, how can one distinguish the roles of racial/gender bias from that of statistical discrimination in the observed racial/gender disparities? Second, what are potential issues to be aware of in the attempts via, e.g. affirmative action policies, to reduce the disparities? The investigators develop new empirical methods and theory as well as new empirical applications to address these questions. In the first project of this proposal, the investigators propose a unified and general framework to formally investigate the conditions under which disparities caused by prejudice and statistical discrimination can be distinguished. The general framework allows the investigators to formally assess the validity of many existing tests in the literature, and also permits them to propose valid empirical tests. In the second project of the proposal, the investigators suggest and empirically implement an outcome-based test for the role of prejudice among emergency department physicians based on the bounceback rates of patients who are discharged from their initial emergency department (ED) visit upon some diagnostic tests. This empirical application is a new contribution to our understanding of the large racial disparities in health care access and health outcomes. In a third project, the researchers analyze the potential problems caused by the fact that a policy-maker - who is interested in increasing racial and/or gender diversity in the workplace - typically has to delegate the hiring decisions to an agent, and the principal and the agent may have conflicting objectives. Two important questions are addressed. First, how do the delegation decision and conflict of interest aspects of the affirmative action problem affect the achievement of affirmative action goals? Two, what are the potential strategies that the principal may adopt to alleviate these problems? Given the importance of racial and gender disparities, as well as existing affirmative action efforts to reduce such disparities, this investigation will bring many new theoretical insights, empirical methods and facts to the social discourse on issues of racial and gender equality.

种族和性别差异在许多领域都有记录，包括就业、保健、抵押贷款和其他贷款情况、机动车拦截和搜查以及陪审团挑选、起诉和判刑等其他执法情况。种族/性别偏见和统计歧视是造成种族和性别差异的两个最重要的原因。“偏见”一词指的是“决策者”（即雇主、医生、贷款人、警察、法官等）产生的心理效用差异。在对“被治疗者”（求职者、病人等）作出决定时，当被治疗者有不同的种族和性别时。相反，“统计歧视”一词是指“决策者”仅仅因为种族和性别特征中包含的合理信息而对不同种族和性别的“被对待者”有不同的看法。两个重要的和相关的问题得到解决。第一，在观察到的种族/性别差异中，如何区分种族/性别偏见与统计歧视的作用？第二，在试图通过平权行动政策等手段缩小差距时，需要注意哪些潜在问题？研究人员开发新的实证方法和理论以及新的实证应用来解决这些问题。在本提案的第一个项目中，调查人员提出了一个统一的总体框架，以正式调查可以区分偏见和统计歧视造成的差异的条件。一般框架允许调查人员正式评估文献中许多现有测试的有效性，并允许他们提出有效的实证检验。在该提案的第二个项目中，研究人员建议并根据急诊科医生的偏见作用，根据一些诊断测试后从首次急诊科（艾德）就诊中出院的患者的反弹率，经验性地实施基于结果的测试。这种经验性的应用是一个新的贡献，我们的理解的巨大的种族差异，在医疗保健和健康结果。在第三个项目中，研究人员分析了潜在的问题所造成的事实，即决策者-谁是在工作场所增加种族和/或性别多样性感兴趣-通常必须委托雇用决定代理，和委托人和代理人可能有冲突的目标。两个重要的问题得到解决。第一，扶持行动问题的授权决定和利益冲突方面如何影响扶持行动目标的实现？第二，校长可能采取哪些潜在的策略来缓解这些问题？鉴于种族和性别差异的重要性，以及现有的平权行动努力，以减少这种差异，这项调查将带来许多新的理论见解，经验方法和事实的社会话语的种族和性别平等问题。