Early-Career Discrimination: Spiraling or Self-Correcting? by Yingni Guo

Join us for another event in the Microeconomics Research Seminar Series, Spring Term 2025.

Yingni Guo, from Northwestern University, will present this week's Microeconomics Seminar on Early-Career Discrimination: Spiraling or Self-Correcting?

Abstract

Do workers from social groups with comparable productivity distributions obtain comparable lifetime earnings? We study how a small amount of early-career discrimination propagates over time when workers’ productivity is revealed through employment. In breakdown learning environments that primarily track on-the-job failures, such discrimination spirals into a substantial lifetime earnings gap for groups of comparable productivity, whereas in breakthrough learning environments that track successes, early-career discrimination can be self-corrected, so comparable groups obtain comparable lifetime earnings. This contrast persists in large labor markets and with flexible wages, inconclusive learning, investment in productivity, and misspecified employers’ beliefs.

This seminar will be held in the Economics Common Room on Monday 17 March at 2.00pm. This event is open to all levels of study and is also open to the public.

To register your place and gain access to the webinar, please contact the seminar organisers.

This event is part of the Microeconomics Research Seminar Series.