American Economic Review Vol. 114 No. 6 2024

Task-Based Discrimination

Erik Hurst¹; Yona Rubinstein²; Kazuatsu Shimizu³

¹ Department of Economics, University of Chicago (email: ) · ² Department of Management, LSE and Department of Economics, University of Houston (email: ) · ³ Department of Economics, MIT (email: )

Abstract

We develop a task-based model of occupational sorting to identify and quantify the effect of discrimination, racial skill gaps, and aggregate task prices on Black-White differences in labor market outcomes over time. At the heart of our framework is the idea that the size and nature of racial barriers faced by Black workers vary by the task requirements of each job. We define a new task that measures the extent to which individuals interact with others as part of their job. We show that this measure is a good proxy for the extent of discrimination in the economy.

DOI

10.1257/aer.20220234

Volume

114

Issue

6

Pages

1723-1768

Language

en

Sources

bibtex:phds-export.bib openalex crossref

Cite

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