Please use this identifier to cite or link to this item: https://hdl.handle.net/10419/51570 
Year of Publication: 
2011
Series/Report no.: 
IZA Discussion Papers No. 5831
Publisher: 
Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), Bonn
Abstract: 
Legal cases are generally won or lost on the basis of statistical discrimination measures, but it is workers' perceptions of discriminatory behavior that are important for understanding many labor-supply decisions. Workers who believe that they have been discriminated against are more likely to subsequently leave their employers and it is almost certainly workers' perceptions of discrimination that drive formal complaints to the EEOC. Yet the relationship between statistical and self-assessed measures of discrimination is far from obvious. We expand on the previous literature by using data from the After the JD (AJD) study to compare standard Blinder-Oaxaca measures of earnings discrimination to self-reported measures of (i) client discrimination; (ii) other work-related discrimination; and (iii) harassment. Overall, our results indicate that conventional measures of earnings discrimination are not closely linked to the racial and gender bias that new lawyers believe they have experience on the job. Statistical earnings discrimination is only occasionally related to increases in self-assessed bias and when it is the effects are very small. Moreover, statistical earnings discrimination does not explain the disparity in self-assessed bias across gender and racial groups.
Subjects: 
labor market discrimination
lawyers
gender and racial bias
wages
JEL: 
J71
J15
J16
J44
Persistent Identifier of the first edition: 
Document Type: 
Working Paper

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