POLI 361 Lecture 9: October 3
10 Dec 2018
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Document Summary
Statistical discrimination: when we have a sort of group profiling, like racial profiling, inequality that exists between demographic groups even though economic agents (consumers, workers, employers, etc. ) are rational and non-prejudiced. Discrimination can be rational if individual attributes are hard to observe (e. g. propensity toward crime) while group membership is observable and different groups have different behaviors on average. Racial discrimination = animus + statistical discrimination. A utility gain in the act of discriminating. If i know, on average, certain groups are more prone to have more violence, more drugs etc. I can infer therefore, rationally, how to act with this group in an unbiased, non-prejudiced way. Says that we can"t measure things directly. You can"t measure animus: nobody will say i am racist and shoot people on a survey! But we can turn to statistics to measure average likeliness. It is a fact that this race statistically has more violence, therefore, should target them more .
