Theory Of Discrimination Research Articles

Female CFOs and loan contracting: Financial conservatism or gender discrimination? – An empirical test based on collateral clauses

Based on signaling and gender discrimination theory, we examine whether chief financial officer (CFO) gender matters to bank–firm relationships and the designing of collateral clauses in bank loan contracting, and explore the potential path of influence. Data taken from Chinese listed companies between 2009 and 2012 indicate that (1) female-CFO-led firms are less likely to obtain credit loans than male-CFO-led firms; (2) female-CFO-led borrowers are more likely to be required to provide collateral for loans than male-CFO-led borrowers; and (3) banks are more inclined to claim mortgaging collateral when lending to female-CFO-led firms and prefer to guarantee collateral when lending to male-CFO-led firms. Female-CFO-led borrowers seem to be granted more unfavorable loan terms than male-CFO-led borrowers, supporting the hypothesis that female CFOs experience credit discrimination. Further analysis reveals that regional financial development helps to alleviate lending discrimination against female CFOs. Furthermore, female CFOs in SOEs are less likely than their non-SOE counterparts to experience gender discrimination in the credit market.

Searching for Women on Boards: An Analysis from the Supply and Demand Perspective

AbstractManuscript TypeReviewResearch Question/IssueThis paper seeks to provide a systematic review of the multidisciplinary theoretical approaches to women on boards in order to understand the factors that hinder and facilitate the access of women to boards, to show the instruments that can be used to promote women to senior corporate positions, and to outline a research agenda suggesting gaps that still need to be filled.Research Finding/ResultsWomen's access to boards appears to be fragmented in research silos from a variety of areas, lacking a comprehensive view that provides instruments to overcome the barriers hindering the access of women to corporate boards. More in particular, this paper has found very little scientific analysis to understand what instruments can be the most efficient in eliminating barriers for women to reach boardrooms given different cultural environments.Theoretical ImplicationsThis paper aims to create a comprehensive framework for understanding the presence of women on boards and for indicating existing gaps to be filled by new research in the future. This framework will help future researchers in analyzing specific instruments and to measure their efficiency in eliminating gender imbalance. Depending on the approach taken for research, the theoretical backgrounds used vary. While on the supply side the predominant theories are gender role theory, gender self‐schema, and work–family conflict, the demand side is based on gender discrimination, human and social capital theory, resource dependence theory, and institutional environment theory.Practical ImplicationsThis research provides suggestions to typify causes and provide nuanced policy tools to promote women into leadership positions. Future lines of research are proposed to fill the gaps in understanding female representation in top management positions.

Evaluating eyewitness identification procedures: ROC analysis and its misconceptions

ROC analysis is a straightforward but non-intuitive way to determine which of two identification procedures better enables a population of eyewitnesses to correctly sort innocent and guilty suspects into their respective categories. This longstanding analytical method, which is superior to using the diagnosticity ratio for identifying the better procedure, is not in any way compromised by the presence of fillers in lineups and is not tied to any particular theory of memory or discrimination (i.e., it is a theory-free methodology). ROC analysis is widely used in other applied fields, such as diagnostic medicine, and this is true even when the medical procedure in question is exactly analogous to a lineup (e.g., a detection-plus-quadrant-localization task in radiology). Bayesian measures offer no replacement for ROC analysis because they pertain to the information value of a particular diagnostic decision, not to the general diagnostic accuracy of an eyewitness identification procedure.

‘Inequality in equality’ in the European Union equality directives

The multi-ground anti-discrimination regimes, such as the one adopted in the European Union (EU) equality directives, have to reconcile the potentially conflicting aims of ‘integration’ and ‘diversity’ between the multiple protected grounds. A more systematic account of how the different grounds of prohibited discrimination relate to one another is needed to explain the differing scope of protection in relation to different grounds as well as to solve potential conflicts between the protected grounds. This article first briefly reiterates how the issue of ‘inequality in equality’ emerges from the EU equality directives. It will then move on to examine how these so-called ‘equality hierarchies’ can be understood in the light of the contemporary discrimination theory. From this theoretical analysis follows the argument that the relationships between different grounds of prohibited discrimination are shaped by the complexity of social identities that underlie the protected grounds. Any attempt to systematize the relationships between the protected grounds therefore stands or falls depending on how well it succeeds in taking into account this complexity. Finally, the article outlines how the idea of subjectivity as ‘identity through agency’ can respond to the complexity of identity formation and provide a much-needed substantive standard for normative ordering between the protected grounds in multidimensional anti-discrimination law.

Detecting the presence of weak magnetic fields using nitrogen-vacancy centers

We show how nitrogen-vacancy centers can be used to detect the presence of weak magnetic fields, that is, to find out whether a magnetic field, about which we may not have complete information, is actually present or not. The solution to this problem comes from quantum state discrimination theory. The effect of decoherence is taken into account to optimize the time over which the nitrogen-vacancy center is allowed to interact with the magnetic field before making a measurement. We also find the optimum measurement that should be performed. We then show how multiple measurements reduce the error in detecting the magnetic field. Finally, a major limitation of the measurement process, namely, limited photon detection efficiency, is taken into account. Our proposals should be implementable with current experimental technology.

Differential Access to Capital from Financial Institutions by Minority Entrepreneurs

This paper examines if Minority small business borrowers have the same access to loans from financial institutions as similar White borrowers. Using matching methods, we find that African-American borrowers are rejected at a higher rate (17-33% higher) than similar risk White-owned firms. We find that the impact of unobservable variables has to be greater than 50%-60% the impact of observable variables to show no discrimination. This bound seems to be a high number given that we have controlled for a comprehensive list of borrower credit risk variables that include their actual credit score and wealth. If the effect of the unoberservable variables is less than this bound, then we have found a casual impact of discrimination for African-American borrowers. No such differential effect is found for Hispanic borrowers. Lumping both races together can give misleading results. Finding higher credit risks, higher rejection rates and equal expected losses for African-American-owned firms is consistent with the statistical or information-based theory of discrimination.

Conceptual design and engineering strategies to increase energy efficiency at enterprises

One of the main strategies for transitioning from a traditional method of increasing energy efficiency to an innovative one—by developing a system for managing energy resources—is considered. The distinguishing characteristics of increasing the energy efficiency are given. The conclusion that conceptual design methods are to used to improve the energy efficiency is drawn. Semantic aspects, concepts, and conceptual models of system management of energy resources are determined. A method for assessing the state of energy resource management by using a multiplicative model of the effect of technological and management factors and applying the image discrimination theory is developed. Research data and an evaluation of the current state of energy resource management in the mining and metallurgical industries are given. Based on the obtained results, the main strategies and engineering facilities to increase energy efficiency using system management of energy resources are presented.

‘It’s Nothing Personal’: Anti-Homosexuality in the British Workplace

Scholarship on homophobia has been critiqued for being individualistic and psychological, failing to account for structural inequalities, experiences of homophobia and discursive manifestations of homophobia. This Economic and Social Research Council funded study attempts to address some of these concerns by focusing on the experiences of lesbians, gay men and bisexuals (LGBs) in relation to bullying, harassment and discrimination in the British workplace. We examine what homophobia is understood to be and how psychological and organisational discourses make it difficult to make sense of negative experiences and how anti-homosexual attitudes and work environments are sustained and left unchallenged through the claim ‘it’s not personal’. Drawing on theories of selective incivility and modern discrimination, we illustrate how ambiguous anti-homosexual sentiments are, and argue that the term ‘homophobia’ not only prevents people from challenging negative experiences, but it further masks inequalities based on sexuality at work.

We are the Champions! Overconfidence in Groups

This paper investigates whether people have distorted beliefs about the ability of the social groups they identify with. We find that experimentally manipulated identification with a randomly composed group leads to overconfident beliefs about fellow group members' performance on an intelligence test. We also find that stronger group identification leads people to put more weight on positive signals, and less weight on negative signals, about their group's relative performance on the test. Our results suggest that beliefs about group ability can be distorted in a similar fashion as beliefs about individual ability. This in-group bias in beliefs has important economic consequences when group membership is used to make inference about an individual's characteristics, as in hiring or judicial decisions. We discuss the potential implications of this bias for economic theories of discrimination.

School experiences of HIV-positive secondary school learners on ARV treatment in Namibia

Although the provision of life-saving antiretroviral (ARV) treatment is central to the medical and policy response to the HIV pandemic, relatively little research in the SADC region and in Namibia particularly, attends to HIV-positive people's experiences and the social effects of taking ARV treatment, with children being least focused on. The study from which the paper is drawn contributes to this dearth by examining the experiences of HIV-positive high school learners on ARV treatment in Khomas Region, Namibia. The study adopted a qualitative case study design based mainly on individual interviews with a purposive, select sample of eight learners at the site school where one of the authors is a teacher-counsellor. Pervasive stigma and discrimination in school notwithstanding, learner journeys reflect shifts from deep despair towards the emergence of voice, positive self-concept, as well as resilient dispositions and behaviour.Using a theory of health-related stigma and discrimination, this paper does two things. First, it contributes to understanding the complex reciprocal relationship between cause and effect of stigma and the attendant discriminatory practices emerging from ‘othering’ and marking the ‘other’ as aberrant. Second, it raises pressing questions on the place and position of schools and teachers in high HIV prevalence contexts, characterized by pervasive stigma and discrimination and where stable family structures, parental oversight and ‘normal’ progression through school cannot be assumed. It raises questions on the nature and form of school support necessary to positively contribute to learner well-being and school completion for those HIV positive and on ARV treatment.

Temporal distributions of schedule-induced licks, magazine entries, and lever presses on fixed- and variable-time schedules.

In this article, schedule-induced drinking (SID) refers to increased drinking by hungry rats exposed to intermittent delivery of food pellets. Two major accounts of SID differ in their explanation of why such drinking tends be concentrated soon after pellet delivery. Temporal discrimination theories propose that drinking is a form of displacement activity that occurs when a pellet is least likely. Adventitious reinforcement theories propose that drinking is displaced to early in an interpellet interval (IPI) by magazine-directed behavior that occurs toward the end of an IPI. The main aim of this study was to examine the latter response-competition account by recording distributions of both licking and magazine entries as SID developed when pellets were delivered to different groups either on a fixed-time (FT 30 s) or on a variable-time schedule (VT 30 s), as in Experiment 1. Although VT 30-s schedules produced essentially flat distributions of magazine entries, licking still tended to be concentrated early in an IPI. Furthermore, there was no indication (Experiments 1 and 2) that magazine entry distributions developed ahead of licking distributions. Experiment 3 examined distributions of lever presses instead of licks: Initially high rates of lever pressing declined both with response-independent schedules (FT and VT) and when a minimal response-dependency was introduced (recycling conjunctive schedule), yet this response also tended to be most frequent soon after pellet delivery. Overall, the data were generally consistent with temporal conditioning theories.

Should a firm engage in behaviour-based price discrimination when facing a price discriminating rival? A game-theory analysis

This article analyses the pricing policy equilibria emerging in a duopoly when one firm may choose whether to engage in behaviour-based price discrimination or uniform pricing while the rival price discriminates. The question we address is: should a firm price discriminate when facing a price discriminating rival? Our main conclusion is that, if the consumers are sufficiently myopic, it is better to choose uniform pricing instead of price discrimination. This is in contrast with the consensus reached in classic price discrimination theory, and it shows that it may be better for a firm to unilaterally renounce to price flexibility when facing a flexible firm.

경제학 관점에서 부분유료화 게임 비즈니스 모델 분석 및 사례 연구

게임에 있어서 부분유료화 사업 모형은 한국에서 처음 상용화가 되어서 이제는 가장 보편적인 사업 모형이 되었으나, 이에 대한 이론적인 내용에 대해서는 잘 알려지지 않았다. 이에 따라 현장에서는 그동안 부분유료화 모형 설계에 있어서 시행착오나 영감에 기초하여 진행해 왔다. 본 연구에서는 경제학의 가격차별화 이론을 바탕으로 부분유료화 사업 모형을 설명하고, 이를 통해 시장지배력, 고객 구분 역량, 그리고 고객간 거래 금지라는 부분유료화 사업 모형의 세가지 핵심조건을 이론적으로 도출하였다. 그리고, 사례 분석을 통해 본 연구에서 제안한 핵심조건이 만족되지 못하였을 경우 어떻게 부분유료화 사업모형이 붕괴되는지에 대해 살펴보고 이를 통해 부분유료화 사업모형 기획의 이론적 배경을 제시하고자 한다. Free-to-play business model, which first commercialized in Korea, now becomes crucial sales drivers in the game industry, but the theoretical background is not well known that most of free-to-play content business models are developed based on the guts and trial-and-errors. In this study, we verified that the price discrimination theory in economics is the backbone of the free-to-play business model, and we also derived the three boundary conditions that should be satisfied in the business model design. We reviewed the three boundary conditions of free-to-play business model using case studies of previous games, and showed how the boundary conditions should work in the actual business. Through case studies, we tried to suggest the theoretical basis of free-to-play business model design, and sales enhancing techniques in free-to-play business.

Demographic Banking: The Impact of Demographic Change on the Financial Constraints of Borrowers at Bavarian Savings Banks

The theory and empirical research of discrimination and credit rationing indicates that certain socio-demographic borrower groups are more likely to be financially constrained than others. In Germany, especially in the mortgage market, empirical evidence for this issue is scarce because of missing data. This study aims to address this issue. Financial data to be used in the study will be taken from an internal banking database, which covers all 71 Bavarian savings banks. This dataset contains information concerning customer specifics including socio-demographic characteristics as well as contract specifics. The focus of this study is on mortgage loans granted by Bavarian savings banks in 2013. The data set consists of about 50,000 customer records. A structural equation model is used to identify the causes of credit constraints in the German mortgage market. This is the first study of credit constraints in the mortgage market in Germany focusing on those socio-demographic borrower specifics that are most relevant within the context of the well documented demographic trends in Germany towards an older, increasingly female and more ethnically diverse population.

Beyond human capital explanations for the gender pay gap among executives: investigating board embeddedness effects on discrimination

AbstractThis paper examines the gender pay gap in top management teams and how it is affected by directors’ embeddedness. We can reconfirm the result of previous studies that differences in managerial compensation between women and men exist, even after controlling for company properties and human capital attributes. Drawing on the language theory of discrimination, we then question how the embeddedness of directors—the actual deciders on executive compensation levels—affects the pay gap: embeddedness causing homophilous behavior resulting in a higher pay gap or directors using their network as knowledge source and decreasing the pay gap. We find evidence that knowledge effects outweigh potential homophily effects.

The occupational status of immigrants in Western and non-Western societies

This study examines existing hypotheses on cross-national differences in immigrants’ labor market integration. Unlike previous research, which focused on Western countries, we study the occupational status of immigrants in both Western and non-Western countries. We use census data for 45 Western and non-Western destination countries and test hypotheses derived from human capital and discrimination theory applying multilevel modeling. The analysis shows that differences in immigrants’ occupational status attainment can partly be explained by pre-migration language exposure, economic advancement of the origin country, geographical distance, group size, and the religious as well as socioeconomic distance of immigrant groups and the majority population. Despite differences in the magnitude of effects, patterns of immigrants’ occupational attainment appear comparable between Western and non-Western societies. We do not find compelling evidence that human capital factors are consistently more important in Western societies.

Is obesity un-American? Disease concerns bias implicit perceptions of national identity

The current research examined whether Americans incorporate obesity into their national identity, and further investigated the role an evolved behavioral immune system plays in shaping Americans' perceptions of obesity and national identity. Two studies revealed that obesity is not, on the whole, incorporated into the American identity at an implicit level. Moreover, when disease concerns were salient, either because of an experimental priming manipulation (Study 1) or due to recent illness (Study 2), thin individuals (for whom obesity may represent a particularly atypical morphology and thus a heuristic cue to disease) implicitly excluded obesity from the American identity to a greater degree. Thus, implicitly categorizing a subgroup of people as an outgroup pathogen threat may promote behavioral avoidance, exclusion, or stigmatization. This behavioral avoidance, could, in turn lead to less risk of fitness-reducing disease contraction. Further implications for evolutionary theories of disease avoidance, group identity, and discrimination are discussed.

A Fabric Defect Detection Algorithm Based on Improved Valley-Emphasis Method

Valley-emphasis is a simple and efficient image segmentation method by adaptively calculating threshold. Due to the uneven illumination or complex image texture, this method directly used for fabric image defect detection will cause inaccurate segmentation result. In this study, we propose a novel fabric image segmentation algorithm for fabric defect detection. The optimal threshold is calculated by considering inter- class variance and between-class variance based on Fisher linear discriminant analysis theory. The fabric defect regions are extraceted from the whole fabric image by threshold segmentation algorithm. Experimental results and comparisons demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method. And it can implement on-line due to its simplicity.

Religious Affiliation and Hiring Discrimination in the American South

This article describes a field experiment in which we sent fictitious résumés to advertised job openings throughout the American South. We randomly altered the résumés to indicate affiliation in one of seven religious groups or a control group. We found that applicants who expressed a religious identity were 26 percent less likely to receive a response from employers. In general, Muslims, pagans, and atheists suffered the highest levels of discriminatory treatment from employers, a fictitious religious group and Catholics experienced moderate levels, evangelical Christians encountered little, and Jews received no discernible discrimination. We also found evidence suggesting the possibility that Jews received preferential treatment over other religious groups in employer responses. The results fit best with models of religious discrimination rooted in secularization theory and cultural distaste theory. We briefly discuss what our findings suggest for a more robust theory of prejudice and discrimination in society.

Priors and Procedure in Systemic Disparate Treatment Law

This paper is the second in a series of two papers addressing the influence of priors in antidiscrimination law. The first paper, Hidden Priors, argued that Bayesian probability theory could harmonize two divergent strands of scholarship on the systemic disparate treatment theory of discrimination. This Bayesian approach challenges the conventional use of statistical evidence in systemic discrimination cases. Critically, the Bayesian approach acknowledges the operation of prior information about the likelihood of unlawful discrimination when evaluating statistical evidence. While a handful of scholars have contemplated a transition to a Bayesian antidiscrimination law, there has been no scholarly treatment of the second-order questions raised by the recognition of Bayesian priors. These second-order questions were highlighted at the conclusion of Hidden Priors. They include hard, but not intractable, questions such as: Whose priors matter? How should priors be incorporated into civil litigation procedures? And, what are legitimate sources of priors? The lack of attention to these questions may explain the stubborn refusal of courts, litigants, and employment law scholars to acknowledge the role of priors in systemic discrimination cases. This second article in the series is meant to spur a healthy scholarly discussion of the second-order questions, even if it cannot provide definitive answers to them. This article argues that the procedural devices of our civil litigation system – though imperfect – are actually well-suited to properly allocate responsibility among legislatures, appellate judges, trial judges, and fact-finders for estimating the prior likelihood of discrimination. This article demonstrates that, once acknowledged, priors can be transparently managed by thoughtful implementation of these procedural devices.