ETHNICALLY BIASED? EXPERIMENTAL EVIDENCE FROM KENYA

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Berge, Lars Ivar Oppedal; Bjorvatn, Kjetil; Galle, Simon; Miguel, Edward; Posner, Daniel N.; Tungodden, Bertil; Zhang, Kelly
• 署名单位: Norwegian School of Economics (NHH); BI Norwegian Business School; University of California System; University of California Berkeley; University of California System; University of California Los Angeles
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF THE EUROPEAN ECONOMIC ASSOCIATION
• ISSN/ISSBN: 1542-4766
• DOI: 10.1093/jeea/jvz003
• 发表日期: 2020
• 页码: 134-164
• 关键词: implicit association test; public-goods; social identity; diversity; DISCRIMINATION; COMPETITION; ETHNICITY; fairness; BEHAVIOR; game

摘要

Ethnicity has been shown to shape political, social, and economic behavior in Africa, but the underlying mechanisms remain contested. We utilize lab experiments to isolate one mechanism-an individual's bias in favor of coethnics and against non-coethnics-that has been central in both theory and in the conventional wisdom about the impact of ethnicity. We employ an unusually rich research design involving a large sample of 1300 participants from Nairobi, Kenya; the collection of multiple rounds of experimental data with varying proximity to national elections; within-lab priming conditions; both standard and novel experimental measures of coethnic bias; and an implicit association test (IAT). We find very little evidence of an ethnic bias in the behavioral games, which runs against the common presumption of extensive coethnic bias among ordinary Africans and suggests that mechanisms other than a coethnic bias in preferences must account for the associations we see in the region between ethnicity and political, social, and economic outcomes.