Presumably, the amount of observable discrimination against minorities in wages and employment depends not only on tastes for discrimination, but also on other variables, such as the degree of competition and civil rights legislation. However, aside from the important theory of compensating differentials originated by Adam Smith, and a few major studies like Myr- dal’s American Dilemma [1944], there was little else available in the 1950s to build on to analyze how prejudice and other variables interact. .
