Statistical discrimination and statistical informativeness
Abstract
We study the link between Phelps-Aigner-Cain-type statistical discrimination and familiar notions of statistical informativeness. Our central insight is that Blackwell's Theorem, suitably relabeled, characterizes statistical discrimination in terms of statistical informativeness. This delivers one-half of Chambers and Echenique's (2021) characterization of statistical discrimination as a corollary, and suggests a different interpretation of it: that discrimination is inevitable. In addition, Blackwell's Theorem delivers a number of finer-grained insights into the nature of statistical discrimination. We argue that the discrimination-informativeness link is quite general, illustrating with an informativeness characterization of a different type of discrimination.
Keywords
Cite
@article{arxiv.2205.07128,
title = {Statistical discrimination and statistical informativeness},
author = {Matteo Escudé and Paula Onuchic and Ludvig Sinander and Quitzé Valenzuela-Stookey},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2205.07128},
year = {2022}
}