Publications
Publications
- 2024
- HBS Working Paper Series
Racial Discrimination and the Social Contract: Evidence from U.S. Army Enlistment during WWII
By: Nancy Qian and Marco Tabellini
Abstract
This paper documents that the Pearl Harbor attack triggered a sharp increase in volunteer enlistment rates of American men, the magnitude of the increase was smaller for Black men than for white men and the Black-white gap was larger in counties with higher levels of racial discrimination. The negative effects of discrimination were more pronounced in places that were geographically distant from Pearl Harbor and in states that had joined the Union more recently. Consistent with the interpretation that discrimination lowers volunteer enlistment, we also document that Japanese American enlistment rates were higher where the Japanese American community was not interned than where it was interned.
Keywords
State Capacity; Institutions; War; Race; Prejudice and Bias; Government Administration; United States
Citation
Qian, Nancy, and Marco Tabellini. "Racial Discrimination and the Social Contract: Evidence from U.S. Army Enlistment during WWII." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 21-005, July 2020. (Revised June 2024. Revise and Resubmit at the Review of Economic Studies. Available also from KelloggInsight, HBS Working Knowledge, and NBER.)