Is there wage rate discrimination in the government today - Essay Example

This draft paper seeks to create a general outline of the main paper that will establish if there is any wage rate discrimination in the Canadian government as well as make several recommendations as to how to best tackle the problem. In this section, the economic theories affecting wage rate discrimination will be critically analyzed and various assumptions that are made by these theories will also be established. Some of the economic theories of wage rate discrimination that will be analyzed include: The theory of Competitive Market: This economic theory predicts equal pay being paid to equally productive workers.

This theory makes the assumption that the level of discrimination in a given labor market is measured by using the ratio of the majority wages to those of the minority wages in a labor market. This theory makes the assumed hypothesis that for different labor markets, the levels of discrimination are greater if the monopoly levels are also greater. It therefore follows that empirical investigations could possibly be conducted to help in the quantification of the relationship that exists between discrimination and competition.

This could potentially aid in the estimation of the increase in the ratio of majority wages to minority wages as the competition in the given market is increased (Cain, 1984, p. 11-12). The Theory of Wage Determination: This theory is seen to specify the existence of a positive relationship between some of the assumed causes of worker productivity such as training and education in a given labor market and the wages received. Empirical studies on the prevalent relations between wage/productivity relations for the majority and minority groups have concentrated on attempting to discover the possible sources of wage discrimination that exist as well as the provision of cost/benefit information that can essentially be used in the