Endophilia or Exophobia: beyond discrimination

The discrimination literature treats outcomes as relative. But does a differential arise because agents discriminate against others – exophobia – or because they favour their own kind – endophilia? Using a field experiment that assigned graders randomly to students’ examinations that did/did not contain names, we find favouritism but no discrimination by nationality nor by gender. We are able to identify these preferences under a wide range of behavioural scenarios regarding the graders. That endophilia dominates exophobia alters how we should measure discriminatory wage differentials and should inform the formulation of anti-discrimination policy.

This is a pre-copyedited, author-produced version of an article accepted for publication in The Economic Journal following peer review. The version of record Feld. J, Salamanca, N., & Hamermesh, D. S. (2016). Endophilia or Exophobia: beyond discrimination. The Economic Journal, 126(594), 1503-1527 is available online at: http://doi.org/10.1111/ecoj.12289