Discrimination between Social Groups: The Influence of Inclusiveness-Enhancing Mechanisms on Trade


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Date

2021

Publication Type

Conference Paper

ETH Bibliography

yes

Citations

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Data

Abstract

The bargaining power of prosumers in a market can vary significantly. Participants can range from industrial participants to powerful and less powerful citizens. Existing trade mechanisms in such markets, e.g., in rural India's energy trade market, show occurrences of discrimination, exclusion, and unfairness. We study how discrimination affects market access, efficiency, and demand satisfaction for the discriminating and discriminated groups via an agent-based simulation, incorporating the available real data. We introduce a mechanism for such markets that is designed for the values of inclusion and equal opportunities. The crux of our mechanism is that goods are divided into smaller units, as determined by the market participants' surplus and demands, and traded anonymously via agents representing the prosumers. We evaluate six hypotheses in a case study about energy trade in rural India, where members of a caste known as Dalits are discriminated by Others. We show that anonymization contributes to the value of inclusion, and the combination of anonymization and inclusion contributes to equal opportunities with respect to market access for both Dalits and Others.

Publication status

published

Book title

Proceedings of the 11th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications

Journal / series

Volume

Pages / Article No.

71 - 82

Publisher

SciTePress

Event

11th International Conference on Simulation and Modeling Methodologies, Technologies and Applications (SIMULTECH 2021)

Edition / version

Methods

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Date created

Subject

Discrimination; Agent-based Simulation; Values; Inclusion

Organisational unit

Notes

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