Categories:
Information Goods, Intellectual Property
If no one practiced statistical discrimination, no one would have any reason to engage in signaling.
If no one practiced statistical discrimination, no one would have any reason to engage in signaling.
Sep 28 2010
During our last few lunches, Robin has challenged me to clarify my position on educational signaling - and help my critics to do the same. And more recently, he named "You have little interest in getting clear on what exactly is the position being argued" as a sign that "[Y]our opinions function more to signal lo...
Sep 27 2010
A year ago, I wrote a little-known post called "Additive Shocks." A week ago, Sumner made my point with more panache:...I don't know about you, but I don't recall reading; "Severe AD shocks are really, really bad, except when the economy is also suffering from some other structural problem. Then they're jus...
Sep 27 2010
If no one practiced statistical discrimination, no one would have any reason to engage in signaling.
READER COMMENTS
Daniel Kuehn
Sep 27 2010 at 6:05am
That might be a little less obvious than you suppose it is – could you elaborate?
What about information asymmetries? Even with no statistical discrimination, if effort and intelligence were not readily observable by employers and they selected people with the same observable (and relevant for the job) characteristics at random it seems like that alone would provide incentive for signalling.
Why do you think it’s only driven by statistical discrimination? Could you explain?
Hyena
Sep 27 2010 at 7:15am
That is trivially true in hiring because the only way to avoid practice statistical discrimination is random selection from applicants.
Ivin Rhyne
Sep 27 2010 at 12:15pm
I disagree and propose the alternative:
If information were not costly, no one would have any reason to engage in signaling.
Signaling is a cheap alternative to information gathering. Statistical discrimination is only one method of overcoming the cost of gathering information.
Ivin
JLA
Sep 27 2010 at 7:15pm
This is true, but because we have limited cognitive abilities, we *have* to use heuristics like statistical discrimination.
Oliver Beatson
Sep 28 2010 at 7:27am
Is signalling not a form of statistical discrimination?
Comments are closed.