Getting a Foot in the Door: “Learning,” State Dependence, and the Racial Integration of Firms
- 3 March 1990
- journal article
- research article
- Published by Cambridge University Press (CUP) in The Journal of Economic History
- Vol. 50 (1), 43-66
- https://doi.org/10.1017/s0022050700035713
Abstract
Economists have emphasized supply-side learning when explaining long-term trends in racial income differences. This article demonstrates that learning also occurred on the demand side. Estimation of a state-dependence model of the sequence of racial employment outcomes of firms in Cincinnati, Ohio, during World War I shows that the introduction of black workers into a previously all-white firm generated new experiences within the firm, altering its future racial employment decisions.This suggests that more research should be done on how firms and labor markets processed information about workers and how that influenced worker opportunities.This publication has 18 references indexed in Scilit:
- Internal labor markets before World War I: On-the-job training and employee promotionExplorations in Economic History, 1988
- Job Discrimination, Market Forces, and the Invisibility HypothesisThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1987
- Path-dependent processes and the emergence of macro-structureEuropean Journal of Operational Research, 1987
- Southern Agrarian Labor Contracts as Impediments to Cotton MechanizationThe Journal of Economic History, 1987
- A Language Theory of DiscriminationThe Quarterly Journal of Economics, 1986
- The Nature of Labor Exchange and the Theory of Capitalist ProductionReview of Radical Political Economics, 1976
- Negro Employment in Southern IndustryJournal of Political Economy, 1952
- The Negro Automobile WorkerJournal of Political Economy, 1943
- The Nature of the FirmEconomica, 1937
- The Industrial Condition of the Negro in New York CityThe Annals of the American Academy of Political and Social Science, 1906