Labor Market Discrimination Discussion Questions

 

 

  1.  There is a slight trend in the private sector to bring back testing as a method of choosing workers from a pool of candidates.  This is partly based on research that shows that personal interviews are poor predictors of worker quality.

a.        Under what conditions might a group of potential employees challenge the use of the test? (6 points)

b.       How could the employer show that the test was a necessary business practice? (6 points)

c.        How could the potential employees still challenge the test if the employers are able to meet their burden of proof in (b)? (6 points)

d.       If the employees are successful in the their challenge in ( c ), what would you expect to observe among groups of employees at the firm? (6 points)

e.        Why might the results in ( c ) support the use of different cutoffs for offers to different groups? (6 points)

 
  1. Suppose that you are employed as an advisor to the National Football Player's Association. Some players claim that there is discrimination against African-American Players. You are given access to data on all the players including information on their experience in the league, their productivity (as measured by their season statistics) and their race. You also have data on their teams that includes ticket prices, profits, television revenues, average attendance at their games broken down by race, racial makeup of the teams and winning percentages.
  1. Suppose that there is discrimination, but the discrimination is based on prejudice by white players on the teams. What information about team makeup and wage differentials would you expect to observe?
  2. Suppose that there is discrimination, but the discrimination is based on prejudice by white football fans. How could you use the data on teams to find evidence of this prejudice?
  3. Suppose that team owners are prejudiced. How would you measure the amount of labor market discrimination against African-American players?
  4. Suppose that there are different degrees of prejudice across owners of teams, ranging from some owners who are completely unprejudiced to other owners who are members of the KKK. Under what conditions could a large amount of discrimination exist for a long time? Under what conditions would we expect no discrimination?