L’économie des discriminations : conquête impérialiste ou contribution à la théorie des prix?

Becker’s Ph.D. thesis on discrimination is commonly viewed as an expression of economics imperialism. This paper questionned the imperialist nature of the study of discrimination in economics, using Becker’s work as a turning point in history of economics. Debates on wage inequalities and discrimination occured in economics before Becker’s work and are central to the discipline (section 1). Becker’s model is more a contribution to the development of “analytical economics” than an explanation of discrimination – essentially because it aims at studying the economic consequences of discrimination (section 2). Statistical discrimination theories – built to oppose Becker’s model – are more representative of economics imperialism because their objective is to explain causes of the discrimination phenomenon.