Past studies of racial discrimination in the for-hire sector of the motor carrier industry find that deregulation is an effective tool for mitigating discrimination. These studies argue that regulation provides a refuge from competition that allows employers to discriminate and pass costs on to consumers. Thus, increased competition of deregulation allows less latitude to discriminate. This study reexamines the impact of deregulation on racial employment in the trucking industry. Specifically, micro-data are used to measure and decompose increased minority participation of for-hire drivers following deregulation. The findings of this paper concur that deregulation increased minority participation in the industry. However, the new findings suggest that only a fraction of this increase can be attributed to employers having less latitude to racially discriminate. Copyright International Atlantic Economic Society 1998
A key implication of Becker’s (1957) work on discrimination is that greater product market competition can reduce employment discrimination generally, and discriminatory wage gaps in particular. Using US data on manufacturing wages and import exposure, we explore whether increased competition, in the form of a heightened exposure to imports, reduces the racial wage gap. Our findings support Becker’s contention. We find that import exposure helped narrow the racial wage gap by about 1.4 percentage points between 1983 and 1993. The effect is especially pronounced among the most disadvantaged: unskilled Southern workers. For them, import exposure helped reduce racial wage disparities by 2.2 percentage points. JEL Classification: F16; J71; J31.
The physical form or design of a product is an unquestioned determinant of its marketplace success. A good design attracts consumers to a product, communicates to them, and adds value to the produc...