Competition and the Racial Wage Gap: Testing Becker's Model of Employer Discrimination

Guilherme Hirata () and Rodrigo Soares
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Guilherme Hirata: affiliation not available

No 9764, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: According to Becker's (1957) theory of taste-based employer discrimination, pure economic rents are necessary for discrimination to be observed in the labor market. Increased competition and reduced rents in the market for final goods should therefore lead to reduced labor market discrimination. We look at the natural experiment represented by the Brazilian trade liberalization from the early 1990s to study the effect of increased competition in the market for final goods on racial discrimination in the labor market. Changes in tariffs and initial employment structures are used to show that, in locations where there were relatively larger increases in exposure to foreign competition between 1990 and 1995, there were also relatively larger declines in the conditional racial wage gap between 1991 and 2000. As predicted by theory, the initial wage gap and its decline were more pronounced in regions with more employment in concentrated sectors. The effect of increased competition on the racial wage gap was not driven by changes in returns to productive attributes, in the structure of employment, or in other labor market outcomes. We find robust evidence of a negative effect of increased competition in the market for final goods on discrimination in the labor market.

Keywords: discrimination; racial wage gap; competition; labor market; trade reform; Brazil (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: F66 J31 J71 J78 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 57 pages
Date: 2016-02
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (15)

Published - published in: Journal of Development Economics, 2020, 146, Article 102519

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Working Paper: Competition and the Racial Wage Gap: Testing Becker’s Model of Employer Discrimination (2018)
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