Association for Public Policy Analysis & Management

Panel: How Might Policy Reduce Racial Discrimination? Advances from Experimental Methods

(Social Equity and Race)

In recent years, researchers have conducted hundreds of field experiments to examine discrimination. These studies consistently find evidence of racial and other types of discrimination in the labor and housing markets, among other domains. Additionally, this evidence suggests that levels of racial discrimination have not changed much in the last few decades (Quillian et al. 2017). Despite the overwhelming evidence, no new national public policies have been introduced to curb racial discrimination and researchers have been somewhat stumped in suggesting what might work. In fact, recent policies intended to reduce discrimination against ex-felons resulted in increased racial discrimination (Agan and Starr 2016). Thus, recent work has called for more developed discrimination research to test mechanisms and push the boundaries of what we can learn from experiments (Gaddis 2018; Pedulla 2018). This panel presents four examples of cutting-edge research heeding those calls. These papers test specific mechanisms of discrimination and examine contexts and processes ignored in prior research. We hope that this panel will provide preliminary evidence and spark discussion on how policy might move forward to reduce discrimination.