From: usenet2@vyznev.invalid   
      
   On 2009-05-10, David Friedman  wrote:   
   > In article ,   
   >  Ilmari Karonen  wrote:   
   >> On 2009-05-10, James A  Donald  wrote:   
   >   
   >> > If people discriminated irrationally, we would observe   
   >> >  that among the those selected from the allegedly   
   >> >  discriminated against group, those selected would be   
   >> >  *better* than those of the allegedly oppressing group.   
   >>   
   >> Not necessarily, since it would be quite possible for a group to be   
   >> _both_ worse at a given job _and_ also irrationally discriminated   
   >> against.  What you'd really need to do is compare the ability   
   >> distributions between the hired employees and the candidate pool (or   
   >> the general population), and test whether they're compatible with the   
   >> assumption that hiring is only done on the basis of ability.   
   >   
   > I'm not sure I understand the test you are proposing. It isn't enough to   
   > observe that a candidate who is a member of the group is less likely to   
   > be hired than an equally able candidate who isn't. That could reflect   
   > rational discrimination, given imperfect information about ability.   
      
   Yes, you're right that limited availability of information makes   
   testing the rationality of hiring decisions even harder, since you   
   have to consider rationality given the information available, rather   
   than merely the limit case where all relevant information is assumed   
   to be available.   
      
   That still doesn't validate James's proposed test -- indeed, it makes   
   it worse.  In fact, in the limit scenario you mentioned (where the   
   applican't sex is the only information available during the hiring   
   process), the test James suggested would not provide *any* information   
   on the rationality of the hiring process, since the marginal ability   
   distributions among the hired workers, conditioned on sex, would   
   simply be identical to those in the applicant pool.   
      
   --   
   Ilmari Karonen   
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