Black–White Earnings Differentials: Privatization versus Deregulation
利用运输业数据检验Becker假说，比较私有化与放松管制对黑人与白人公交司机和卡车司机收入差异的影响。
Over 40 years ago Gary Becker (1957) argued that competition helps mitigate the ability of firms to engage in wage and employment discrimination. Deregulated transportation industries, in particular, provide fertile ground to test the Becker hypothesis. The increase in competition from deregulation should make it increasingly costly for employers to exercise discriminatory preferences. Several studies of the deregulated trucking industry provide support for this hypothesis (Nancy L. Rose, 1987; Peoples and Lisa Saunders, 1993; John S. Heywood and Peoples, 1994). This study also utilizes information on transportation industries to test the Becker hypothesis. It differs from the literature in that one of the transportation industries examined is privatized.1 At question is whether the Becker hypothesis also holds for a publicly owned transportation industry in a privatized environment. This question is addressed by investigating privatization's effect on black-white earnings differentials of public-transit bus drivers. These results are then compared with deregulation's effect on black-white earnings differentials of private for-hire truck drivers. Such a comparison allows for analyzing differences in differential earnings for comparable occupations in privatization and deregulation regimes. I. Transportation Industries