I literally just finished Economics of Discrimination for my labor class, and I changed how I teach this (and the entire labor econ) dramatically this year, after so disturbed by economists saying "taste discrimination is inefficient and statistical discrimination is efficient".1 https://twitter.com/wagesofwins/status/1198418492770271234
Such outdated theories (once again, reasons we need diversity than white knights... ) still shape every aspects of our field. Women, POC, under-represented social economic groups, economists from non-dominant countries have to strive so hard, even in just publishing to "fit-in".2
to whoever determines what a good/interesting question is; what an important/significant contribution is... A lot of us have to abandon, oftentimes, the key reason that we initially enter in the study of economics, or just leave the field altogether... 3
Anyway, had the theories of discrimination being developed by those who live daily in the struggle against it some half a decade ago, we probably would have a more burgeoning theoretical understanding of discrimination in economics. 4
Discrimination messes us in the utility function, risk aversion, elasticity of labor supply, discounting, initial distribution of state variables, shock paths we receive the entire lifespan and cross-generations... In short... ITS NOT JUST F*CKING PROFIT MAXIMIZATION!!! 5
Back to my labor class, I tried to leave a msg to students that thanks to a recent burgeoning collection of effort in empirical studies, economists (hopefully) finally start to see that discrimination is inefficient in all its aspects and CANNOT be driven out by market. 6
The so-called "efficient" statistical discrimination is THE WORST KIND OF MISALLOCATION WEDGE created by colonialism and is still fucking the entire world we live in. THAT'S THE WORST TYPE OF INEFFICIENCY THAT THE MARKET CANNOT SOLVE. 7/end of Sunday-morning-complain
You can follow @GuanyiYang.
Tip: mention @twtextapp on a Twitter thread with the keyword “unroll” to get a link to it.

Latest Threads Unrolled: