CULTURAL DIVERSITY, DISCRIMINATION, AND ECONOMIC OUTCOMES: AN EXPERIMENTAL ANALYSIS

Does cultural diversity affect economic outcomes? We develop an experimental framework that complements ongoing research on this question. We vary the ethnic mix of bargaining sessions to study intercultural interactions among members of U.S. Hispanic and Navajo cultures. We control for demographic differences in our subject pools and elicit beliefs directly in order to differentiate between statistical discrimination and preference‐based discrimination. Hispanic and Navajo subjects behave differently, and their behavior is affected by the ethnic composition of the experimental session. Our experimental framework can shed light on economic behavior and outcomes in societies of mixed ethnicity, race, and religion. (JEL C78, C90, Z10)     

Random Digit Dialing: A Sampling Technique for Telephone Surveys

This paper describes an investigation into the efficiency ofa random-digit-dialed telephone survey for the collection ofhealth attitude information. Data come from a survey of adultsin Oakland County, Michigan, conducted during the 1976–77swine influenza immunization campaign. Information is presentedon the results of dialing to sample telephone numbers, the frequencyof nonworking numbers within the sample, problems with numbersthat were never answered, and precision of sample estimates.In addition, some rough estimates of cost are presented andcompared to survey costs reported in other studies. Findingssuggest that random digit dialing is an efficient survey method,both in terms of cost in implementation and sampling precision.