Rationally Inattentive Statistical Discrimination: Arrow Meets Phelps

Fuente: arXiv
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Autori principali: Echenique, Federico, Li, Anqi
Natura: Preprint
Pubblicazione: 2022
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author Echenique, Federico
Li, Anqi
author_facet Echenique, Federico
Li, Anqi
contents When information acquisition is costly but flexible, a principal may rationally acquire information that favors one group over another. The former group faces incentives to invest in becoming productive, while the latter is discouraged from such investments. The principal, in turn, ignores the productivity difference between groups unless the underinvested group surprises him with a genuinely outstanding outcome. We give conditions under which the discriminatory equilibrium is most preferred by the principal, despite all groups being ex-ante identical. Our results inform the discussion of affirmative action, implicit bias, and occupational segregation and stereotypes.
format Preprint
id arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2212_08219
institution arXiv
publishDate 2022
record_format arxiv
spellingShingle Rationally Inattentive Statistical Discrimination: Arrow Meets Phelps
Echenique, Federico
Li, Anqi
Theoretical Economics
When information acquisition is costly but flexible, a principal may rationally acquire information that favors one group over another. The former group faces incentives to invest in becoming productive, while the latter is discouraged from such investments. The principal, in turn, ignores the productivity difference between groups unless the underinvested group surprises him with a genuinely outstanding outcome. We give conditions under which the discriminatory equilibrium is most preferred by the principal, despite all groups being ex-ante identical. Our results inform the discussion of affirmative action, implicit bias, and occupational segregation and stereotypes.
title Rationally Inattentive Statistical Discrimination: Arrow Meets Phelps
topic Theoretical Economics
url https://arxiv.org/abs/2212.08219