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Publications (35)
Working Paper
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– An experimental investigation
We study the effect of affirmative action on effort in an experiment conducted in high schools in socioeconomically disadvantaged areas in Queensland, Australia. All participating schools have a large representation of indigenous Australians, a population group that is frequently targeted by...
Working Paper
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Research on caste-based inequalities in India has generally focused on differences between large categories such as the Scheduled Castes, the Scheduled Tribes, and the remainder of the population. We contribute to the literature on horizontal inequalities in India by looking within these groupings...
Blog
Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid in 1994...
Working Paper
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Racial wage inequality and discrimination have pervaded South African society for centuries. Apartheid legislation cemented these disparities by institutionalizing white job reservation and many other unfair practices. While racial wage gaps started to decline towards the end of apartheid, they...
Working Paper
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– Lessons learned and a way forward
There are several countries who have responded to concerns regarding historically disadvantaged groups, particularly ethnic and racial minorities and women, with not only anti-discrimination legislation, but also affirmative action policies. Although these policies are seemingly well intentioned...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
– Evidence from the Han and ethnic minorities in China
This study investigates the unexpected impact that enforcing birth control policies in China has upon the educational stratification between the Han majority, the policy target group, and ethnic minorities, a partially excluded group. Exploring county-level variation in the value of fines levied for...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from India
The persistent gap in economic outcomes between the upper and lower caste groups in India is typically explained through differences in endowments and the presence of discrimination. While there is sizable literature that examines caste gaps in physical and intellectual human capital, this paper...
Journal Article
This peer-reviewed research is available free of charge. UNU-WIDER believes that research is a global public good and supports Open Access.
We take school admission mechanisms to the lab to test whether the widely-used manipulable Immediate Acceptance mechanism disadvantages students of lower cognitive ability and whether this leads to ability segregation across schools. Results show this to be the case: lower ability participants...
Working Paper
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– Evidence from a lab-in-the-field experiment in a South African township
The paper presents the results of a lab-in-the-field experiment in three South African townships located in the suburbs of Cape Town. The experimental design consists of a set of decisions on how the members of a naturally occurring group allocate an endowment to a private or to a public account. In...
The Center for American Progress estimates the costs of discrimination at US$64 billion per year, or roughly 2 million annually displaced American workers (Burns, 2012). Discrimination is clearly costly. It is also, almost universally, a unique and puzzling issue. This blog looks at two recent WIDER...
Working Paper
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– Challenges and solutions
In this paper, we analyse which channels influence individual preferences concerning the choice of the official language in Zambia. We develop a theoretical framework, which is tested using data on elicited beliefs about the effects of changes in Zambia's language policy on schooling outcomes...
Working Paper
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The market environment in which discriminatory firms operate may be a relevant determinant of their extent of discrimination. In this paper we aim at analysing the effect of local labour market conditions on a firm’s decision to discriminate. We use a direct measure of discrimination using online...
Working Paper
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– Caste, affirmative action, and stigma
This paper presents the results of an attitude survey administered to university students in India that attempts to delineate the social–psychological mechanisms of ‘externalization’ and ‘internalization’ to understand the possible consequences of stigma associated with caste-based affirmative...
Working Paper
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People with disabilities in Ghana and other developing economies are discriminated against in many fundamental elements of human empowerment such as education and employment. While some employers are unwilling to hire, the educational systems do not provide enabling environment for a good education...
Working Paper
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– Comparative evidence from Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam
We investigate whether there are racial and ethnic disparities in children’s education in Ethiopia, India, Peru, and Vietnam. We find that in all the four countries, and especially in Vietnam, children from small ethnic groups have lower education attainment and cognitive ability. The gap in...
Working Paper
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– Discrimination in the rental housing market in Delhi, India
Using an audit experiment carried out on of India’s largest real estate websites, we document striking variations between landlords’ treatment of upper-caste Hindus, Other Backward Castes, Scheduled Castes, and Muslims. We find strong evidence of discrimination against Muslim applicants, both in...
Displaying 16 of 35 results