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Comments on: Can free markets punish racists? http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/ The Visible Hand in Economics Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:09:38 +0000 hourly 1 https://wordpress.org/?v=6.9.4 By: msn nick http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20621 Wed, 29 Jul 2009 13:09:38 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20621 Thanks Raupahara, your article is quite interesting.

]]> By: Eric Crampton http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20595 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 23:32:55 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20595 @Rauparaha: I was thinking of a moral libertarian, not a consequentialist one. A consequentialist libertarian is just a utilitarian who happens to think that markets work well. Whether I’m the former or the latter? Fuzzy mix, but I beat down all parts of the moral libertarian bit when I’m doing economic analysis :>

]]> By: Invisible Man http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20591 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 16:38:44 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20591 I live in a 3rd world country, and belive me, the rasism is here, all over the place, people are hateing each other and they are not affraid of showing it. I’m talking about minorityes. The strange thing is that everybody loves the turists, no matter what thei nationalities are.

Cheers from south-east Europe.

]]> By: rauparaha http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20579 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 03:29:41 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20579 @Eric Crampton
Really? Even a consequentialist libertarian, as I imagine you would class yourself, would hold that contract has inherent sanctity? Interesting.

I have read some of Becker’s work on discrimination, but I might flick through your list of readings sometime, thanks.

]]> By: Eric Crampton http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20578 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:47:42 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20578 @Ruaparaha: A libertarian would say that it’s wrong to violate freedom of contract regardless of what the empirics show about actual discrimination. An economist comes up with models predicting when we might see more or less discrimination, then takes them to the data for testing. If the results of those empirical studies are that there really isn’t any wage gap between men and women, blacks and whites, or whatever groups, once you control appropriately for work experience, education, intelligence and whatnot, then a libertarian might point to that as an additional reason to oppose such legislation.

Go download my syllabus for Econ 224 and read through some of the actual literature on the topic. There’s a lot of it.
http://www.econ.canterbury.ac.nz/personal_pages/eric_crampton/224-2009.pdf

]]> By: ben http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20577 Tue, 28 Jul 2009 01:45:24 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20577 @rauparaha

Another fine point, Rauparaha. They’re also both white males. You could equally usefully point that out, too.

]]> By: rauparaha http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20570 Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:28:31 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20570 @ben
There are many different arguments both for and against anti-discrimination laws. Becker and Epstein are noted libertarian scholars, one an economist and one a lawyer. Thus what you call the ‘economic argument’ is clearly not limited to economists. Given that the argument favours the unfettered exercise of personal rights and freedoms to overcome discrimination, it doesn’t seem a huge stretch to suppose it is favoured by libertarians, does it? At least two leading libertarian thinkers, anyway.

]]> By: ben http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20569 Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:20:32 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20569 @rauparaha

Who said anything about libertarian? I have no idea what the libertarian argument on this is. Why even raise it? I thought this post was about markets and rewards (or dis-rewards) for racism.

]]> By: rauparaha http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20568 Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:13:41 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20568 @Eric Crampton
Your reporting of Becker’s work seems intuitive: as profits decline the opportunity to discriminate decreases. It does seem unlikely that discrimination would ever reach zero, except in a hypothetical case, though.

Thanks for the counterfactual offer 😉

]]> By: Eric Crampton http://www.tvhe.co.nz/2009/07/28/can-free-markets-punish-racists/#comment-20566 Mon, 27 Jul 2009 23:02:28 +0000 http://www.tvhe.co.nz/?p=4097#comment-20566 @Rauparaha: Check the original Becker work. He gives some empirics consistent with his model: the more competitive the industry, the less discrimination.

The most plausible story for market-sustained discrimination comes from the work of Glen Loury on statistical discrimination.

I do a week on the economics of discrimination in my Econ 224 class at Canterbury. Too bad you’re in Wellington or you could sit in :>

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