American Economic Review Vol. 111 No. 6 2021
Types of Contact: A Field Experiment on Collaborative and Adversarial Caste Integration
Abstract
I estimate the effects of collaborative and adversarial intergroup contact. I randomly assigned Indian men from different castes to participate in cricket leagues or to serve as a control group. League players faced variation in collaborative contact, through random assignment to homogeneous-caste or mixed-caste teams, and adversarial contact, through random assignment of opponents. Collaborative contact increases cross-caste friendships and efficiency in trade, and reduces own-caste favoritism. In contrast, adversarial contact generally reduces cross-caste interaction and efficiency. League participation reduces intergroup differences, suggesting that the positive aspects of intergroup contact more than offset the negative aspects in this setting.
- DOI
- 10.1257/aer.20191780
- Volume
- 111
- Issue
- 6
- Pages
- 1807-1844
- Language
- en
- Sources
- bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref