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I wondered why they didn't report results for black versus white. Interestingly, they didn't run that: "After long and thoughtful consideration, we discarded t

by dash2 6y ago

I wondered why they didn't report results for black versus white. Interestingly, they didn't run that: "After long and thoughtful consideration, we discarded the idea of assigning African-American names to our fictitious entrepreneurs. First, there has been a concern about the ability to disentangle race and socioeconomic perception by using distinctly African-American names (Fryer and Levitt (2004)). Second, and most importantly, African-American entrepreneurs are woefully underrepresented in high-impact entrepreneurship (less than 1%, see Gompers and Wang (2017)). This poses a substantial challenge for our setup, because even names that are disproportionately likely to be African-American in the general population (such as “Martin Jackson”) may not be perceived as African-American by investors in this context." It's an interesting point, are there any unambiguously African-American names? I wouldn't have guessed Martin Jackson was African-American, but I'm English.

cameronh90 6y ago
"are there any unambiguously African-American names" Something like DeShawn is almost certainly going to be a black person, but that would have socioeconomic perception issues as the text points out. It's an interesting point though. I had a look for data and couldn't really find much of use.
Udik 6y ago
> are there unambiguously African-American names? The part you quoted seems to say exactly that: there are unambiguously African-American names, but they are associated with low-class, low education backgrounds. Which might confuse the statistics as then the choice would not be purely about race but race and socioeconomic status.
- dash2 6y ago
  That seems an odd take. Should we look for pure discrimination against any group, that isn't related precisely to the associations people make? I mean, it's possible. Faced with two people who (they believe) have identical backgrounds, I may discriminate against the black one purely because I dislike black people. But equally, I may have imperfect knowledge about two people, and knowing that one is black makes me associate them - consciously or not - with different things. That might then affect my willingness to give them a job. This is close to the difference between "taste-based" and "statistical" discrimination, in economists' terms.* Normally we care about both, so why not try to find out about it? It also seems unlikely that Asian names are free of associations, including e.g. associations about being hard working and/or nerdy, which might matter in a study like this. * Though, I don't think it's identical. You might dislike someone (taste-based discrimination) based on your associations with their ethnicity. And you might predict purely from their ethnicity, holding everything else constant, that they would do worse in a job (statistical discrimination). (E.g. if it's a sales job and you believe buyers are racist.)
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by dash2 6y ago

cameronh90 6y ago

"are there any unambiguously African-American names" Something like DeShawn is almost certainly going to be a black person, but that would have socioeconomic perception issues as the text points out. It's an interesting point though. I had a look for data and couldn't really find much of use.

Udik 6y ago

> are there unambiguously African-American names? The part you quoted seems to say exactly that: there are unambiguously African-American names, but they are associated with low-class, low education backgrounds. Which might confuse the statistics as then the choice would not be purely about race but race and socioeconomic status.

dash2 6y ago
That seems an odd take. Should we look for pure discrimination against any group, that isn't related precisely to the associations people make? I mean, it's possible. Faced with two people who (they believe) have identical backgrounds, I may discriminate against the black one purely because I dislike black people. But equally, I may have imperfect knowledge about two people, and knowing that one is black makes me associate them - consciously or not - with different things. That might then affect my willingness to give them a job. This is close to the difference between "taste-based" and "statistical" discrimination, in economists' terms.* Normally we care about both, so why not try to find out about it? It also seems unlikely that Asian names are free of associations, including e.g. associations about being hard working and/or nerdy, which might matter in a study like this. * Though, I don't think it's identical. You might dislike someone (taste-based discrimination) based on your associations with their ethnicity. And you might predict purely from their ethnicity, holding everything else constant, that they would do worse in a job (statistical discrimination). (E.g. if it's a sales job and you believe buyers are racist.)
- deleted 6y ago
  [deleted]