Faculty bio | 541-346-7318

Peter Younkin is an academic expert in entrepreneurship, diversity and cultural industries. His research focuses on how racial and gender discrimination influence how people make decisions in the market—from financial investments to hiring and promotion. For instance, in one recent paper he looked at how employers treat job applicants with experience as founders and showed that employers were significantly less likely to hire ex-entrepreneurs than they were otherwise identical applicants. However, this penalty was not applied to women—suggesting that women may face fewer costs to pursuing entrepreneurship than men. In a second recent paper he looked at how support for Black founders varied in the aftermath of a polarizing event (e.g. the death of George Floyd) and showed that the increased salience of racial differences reduces support for Black founders, a previously unanticipated cost. Recent work has also considered the role of race in Hollywood casting and how genre-spanning affects the popularity of new musicians.

Recent Media: 
Racial bias is rampant on GoFundMe and Kickstarter, study says (New York Post, March 8, 2019)
Movie audiences aren’t as racist as Hollywood execs think: study (New York Post, Dec. 7, 2018)
Researcher uses hacked studio data to prove racially diverse casts are more profitable (Phys, Dec. 7, 2018)
Hollywood Has No Business Case for Booking All-White Casts (The Atlantic, May 2016)