Product Market Structure and Labor Market Discrimination

Measures the relationship between market competition and the treatment of women, minorities, and the disabled in the workplace.While increased competition may generate economic efficiency and push employee compensation to market rates, it may also help reduce differential treatment for protected groups such as women, minorities, and the disabled. This book presents the most comprehensive body of empirical evidence on the connection between the product market and the extent of discrimination in labor markets. The contributors look at data from the United States, the United Kingdom, Germany, and Hong Kong in order to explore the product market's influence on discrimination against the disabled, the role of deregulation in creating competition and altering racial employment patterns, and the influence of privatization on public employees' earnings. Nuanced analyses, using best practice econometrics, lead the contributors to conclude that while competition helps equalize treatment of employees, it does not eliminate discrimination.John S. Heywood and James H. Peoples are Professors of Economics at the University of Wisconsin at Milwaukee. Heywood is the coeditor (with Michelle Brown) of Paying for Performance: An International Comparison, and Peoples is the editor of Regulatory Reform and Labor Markets.