Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: evidence from an Internet-based search channel

Stefan Eriksson and Jonas Lagerström ()
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Jonas Lagerström: IFAU - Institute for Labour Market Policy Evaluation, Postal: P O Box 513, SE-751 20 Uppsala, Sweden

No 2007:19, Working Paper Series from IFAU - Institute for Evaluation of Labour Market and Education Policy

Abstract: This paper uses data from an Internet-based CV database to investigate how factors which may be used as a basis for discrimination, such as the searchers’ ethnicity, gender, age and employment status, affect the number of contacts they receive from firms. Since we have access to essentially the same information as the firms, we can handle the problems associated with unobserved heterogeneity better than most existing studies of discrimination. We find that, even when we control for all other differences, searchers who have non-Nordic names, are old or unemployed receive significantly fewer contacts. Moreover, we find that this matters for the hiring outcome: Searchers who receive more contacts have a higher probability of actually getting hired.

Keywords: Job search; Unobserved heterogeneity; Discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 37 pages
Date: 2007-08-25
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ict and nep-lab
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (11)

Published as Eriksson, Stefan and Jonas Lagerström, 'Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: evidence from an Internet-based search channel' in Empirical Economics, 2012, pages 537-563.

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Related works:
Journal Article: Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: evidence from an Internet-based search channel (2012)
Working Paper: Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: Evidence from an Internet-based search channel (2007)
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