Categories:
Politics and Economics
During my recent visit to Austin, I interviewed Richard Hanania for the Salem Center’s podcast. Very wide-ranging, hence the title: “The Politics of Everything.” Enjoy!
READER COMMENTS
Elijah Eby
Feb 2 2022 at 10:34am
Bryan, please become a podcaster.
Parrhesia
Feb 2 2022 at 5:35pm
This was very enjoyable. I have to say that you asked some excellent questions. I agree with Elijah, you should consider podcasting!
John Alcorn
Feb 5 2022 at 10:58am
What a lively, wide-ranging conversation!
At 1:06:22, the conversation touches on markets and discrimination:
It is useful to distinguish employers, workers, and customers. A profit-maximizing employer must reckon with what workers want, and what customers want. In contexts of team production, workers’ preferences about “whom they’re around” — motivated discrimination — might shape productivity, and so constrain the hiring decisions of a profit-maximizing employer. In contexts of close interaction between employees and customers, a customer’s “interaction tastes” might shape her choice of “which business to patronize”, and so indirectly constrain the hiring decisions of a profit-maximizing employer.
It seems plausible that the sign and strength of any ‘team interaction effects’ within the firm, and of any ‘customer interaction effects’ in services, will vary by group identity (e.g., sex, race, religion, age) and by industry.
(To complicate matters, profit-maximizing employer must also reckon with the fact that workers and customers, too, have some propensity for ‘statistical discrimination’.)
See, for example:
Kenneth J. Arrow, “What Has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination?,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12:2 (Spring 1998) 91-100.
John Yinger, “Evidence on Discrimination in Consumer Markets,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 12:2 (Spring 1998) 23-40:
If many workers and many customers have entrenched preferences for discrimination, then it takes a Beckerian risk-taking entrepreneur to play the role of “first mover” against discrimination. See Branch Rickey and Jackie Robinson, who had to win the confidence of Dodger teammates and the loyalty of ticket-buyers at ballparks.
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