Seeing Through Color Blindness: Social Networks as a Mechanism for Discrimination
研究企业在种族色盲且通过推荐招聘时，少数群体因社交网络规模小而在推荐就业和工资上处于劣势，提出“社会网络歧视”机制，并用青年网络数据估算福利差距。
I study labor markets in which firms both hire via referrals and are race blind or color-blind. I develop an employment model showing that despite initial equality in ability, employment, wages, and network structure, minorities receive disproportionately fewer jobs through referrals and lower expected wages, simply because their social group is smaller. This discriminatory outcome, which I term “social network discrimination,” arises from homophily and falls outside the dominant economics discrimination models, which are taste based and statistical. I calibrate the model using a nationally representative sample of youth networks to estimate the lower bound welfare gap caused by social network discrimination, which also disadvantages black workers. This paper isolates a potential underlying mechanism for inequality, adding to the understanding of labor-market disparities that have been widely studied across the social sciences. In doing so, the paper disproves the proposition that color-blind policies inherently promote individual merit.