Labor Market Discrimination and the Macroeconomy

Muhammad Asali and Rusudan Gurashvili
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Rusudan Gurashvili: National Bank of Georgia

No 12101, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Using Integrated Household Survey data from Georgia, we measure the observable and discriminatory ethnic wage gap, among male and female workers, and the gender wage gap, among Georgians and non-Georgians. The gender wage discrimination is larger than the ethnic wage discrimination. In the second estimation stage, these wage discrimination estimates are used in a general-to-specific vector autoregression framework to test for the Granger causality between discrimination and growth. A general, negative, bidirectional Granger causality is found between these two variables: in the long-run, discrimination reduces economic growth, and economic growth lowers discrimination. Also, we find that higher unemployment rates are associated with increased ethnic wage discrimination–in line with the predictions of Becker's theory of discrimination.

Keywords: labor market discrimination; transition economies; growth; granger causality (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J15 J16 J71 O43 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 35 pages
Date: 2019-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma and nep-tra
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

Published - revised version published in: Economics of Transition & Institutional Change, 2020, 28 (3), 515-533.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Labour market discrimination and the macroeconomy (2020)
Working Paper: Labor Market Discrimination and the Macroeconomy (2019)
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