Where identity-based discrimination varies across the levels of a job ladder, an
identity-blind, profit-maximising firm that merely prices it generates pay gaps and
glass ceilings for equally able workers who may suffer no discrimination themselves,
even under equal pay for equal work. Two spillovers operate. Whether a group
reaches the top turns only on how its treatment changes as it approaches the top,
not on how bad conditions are there or below. Pay responds to discrimination at a
worker's own level and, through informational rents, below it, so a gap at the top
may originate entirely at the bottom.