What's Right When You're Left? Minority Advantage and Disadvantage in Competitive and Cooperative Environments
Year: 2016
Type: preprint
Abstract: This paper investigates how majority-minority inequality arises in different economic environments. In the competitive environment, individuals tend to invest more in competing against members of the majority group, which leads to a minority advantage. In the cooperative environment, individuals tend to invest more in cooperating with members of the majority group, which instead yields a minority disadvantage. This idea is formalized by a game-theoretical model and tested in a laboratory experiment. Consistent with the model’s predictions, the minority subjects earn more in the competitive environment but earn less in the cooperative environment compared to the majority subjects, and the payoff gap is bigger when the minority group is relatively small.
Source: SSRN Electronic Journal
Author: Simin He
Language: English
Subfield: Economics and Econometrics
Domain: Social Sciences
SDG: Reduced inequalities
Open Access status: green
OpenAlex ID: W2297985393