Using microeconomic data sets from the United States and the Netherlands, this study considers how agents perceive characteristics that are discriminated against. It uses the examples of beauty and height to examine whether: 1) Absolute or relative differences in a characteristic affect...

Adjusted for many other determinants, beauty affects earnings; but does it lead directly to the differences in productivity that we believe generate earnings differences? We take a large sample of student instructional ratings for a group of university professors, acquire six independent...

Economic theories of discrimination are usually based on tastes. The huge body of empirical studies, however, considers the discriminatory outcomes that are the reduced-form results of interactions between tastes and opportunity sets. None examines tastes for discrimination directly, or...