The old chair of my alma mater’s economics department, Glenn Loury is, somehow, wrapped up in a kerfuffle related to the student protests that have broken out across the United States. Loury, who is now at Brown, wrote an op-ed in the student paper which to an economist just says that the major racial problem in the United States is statistical discrimination not taste-based discrimination, and hence the types of protests and desired recourse of the student protesters is wrongheaded. After being challenged about “what type of a black scholar” he is, Loury wrote a furious response pointing out that he is, almost certainly, the world’s most prominent scholar on the topic of racial discrimination and potential remedies, and has been thinking about how policy can remedy racial injustice since before the student’s parents were even born.
An important aspect of his work is that, under statistical discrimination, there is…
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