ABSTRACT
From a public choice perspective, discrimination, in general terms, describes a specific form of behaviour by one group of economic actors within a particular society vis-à-vis another group. A classical example of such discrimination is the behaviour of men vis-à-vis women. Clearly many men - though by no means all - have found it advantageous to exclude women from the labour market and public life. Discrimination, however, was not limited to a tacit agreement, or a conspiracy, among male 'chauvinists'. On the contrary, discrimination has been openly displayed and defended on religious or pseudo-biological grounds, and it became institutionalized through laws and regulations. In other words, discrimination was based on collective action by one sector of society which succeeded in imposing an institutional setting that made it possible to allocate income, life chances and upward mobility according to criteria other than individual effort, skill or education. The question which needs to be dealt with today, however, is not how discriminating institutions emerged, but why they could — and can - persist.
