ABSTRACT

Over the last three decades a growing political movement among lesbian, gay, and bisexual (LGB) people has led to a heightened public debate about the existence of discrimination against LGB people and about the appropriate government response to actual or perceived discrimination.1 Academics in general, and economists in particular, have been slower to respond to the need to study discrimination. In the last ten years, however, economists have awakened to some of the interesting intellectual questions implicated by considering discrimination and sexuality. Recently economists have produced a fl urry of empirical papers analyzing earnings differences by sexual orientation. Overall, the bulk of the evidence from studies by economists and others fi ts the hypothesis that lesbian, gay, and bisexual people face employment discrimination in the labor market in the United States and in some other countries.