Rethinking racial discrimination

The economics profession is in a moment of racial reckoning.

A field still dominated by white men is rethinking long-held notions about racial discrimination and its impact on the profession. That includes the way that the issue is studied.

Harvard professor Mario Small says that sociology can help. There is a lot about how institutional discrimination works that traditional economic models miss. In the latest issue of the Journal of Economic Perspectives, he and his co-author, the late Devah Pager, say that limiting the study of discrimination to the actions of prejudiced individuals “dramatically understates” the impact on social inequality, on labor markets, credit, housing, and many other contexts.

Professor Small recently spoke with the AEA’s Chris Fleisher about how economists should broaden their notions of discrimination, how the lack of diversity in economics constrains the research, and some big questions he would like to see economists take on.