Employment Discrimination

Abstract

The law and economics scholarship on employment discrimination examines the welfare consequences of the legal rules regulating employment discrimination. While substantial overlap exists, the inquiry is distinct from the efforts of labor economists to determine the extent of discrimination in labor markets. For surveys in this vein, see Darity and Mason (1998) and Blau (1998). It is also distinct from the efforts of academic lawyers to describe and criticize employment discrimination laws. The major task of the law and economics work surveyed here is to link the two inquiries by studying the effects of law on the labor market. This review limits itself to the literature on race, sex, and disability discrimination, ignoring the important area of age discrimination. See Posner (1989) for an excellent overview of the issues.

Keywords: discrimination law, race discrimination, sex discrimination, disability discrimination, employment law, labor markets, law and economics