Teaching Economics with Media
A summary of the labor market impacts for naming children with “distinctively black names.” Researchers conduct resume studies in Chicago and Boston to determine the frequency of callbacks for two identical employees with different-sounding names. This subtle form of discrimination lengthens the spells of unemployment and creates a gap between white and black workers. Not hiring a worker because an employed believes the applicant is African American is a form of employment discrimination.
A 20/20 investigation into how we subtly discriminate based on looks when it comes to donating to charity. About 1/5 people in total donated money, but requesters who were rated as better looking raised more money than the other requesters. Better looking women were able to raise twice as much money as their counterparts.
This classic bit from Freakonomics always starts an interesting conversation when I get to the discrimination section of my labor economics course.
Stephen Dubner interviews a young woman who had a big career change, and went from earning about $70k a year as a computer programmer to more than four times that while working fewer hours
Bad historical assumptions about why things happen – after all, ice cream consumption was blamed for causing polio once upon a time.
Levitt’s incentive scheme for potty training his daughter, Amanda, backfires.
This is a great clip to introduce the concept of unintended consequences. While not all students are familiar with the struggles of potty training, nearly all of them can relate to the incentives of cheating on a standardized test.