Anonymous Job Applications of Fresh Ph.D. Economists

Annabelle Krause-Pilatus, Ulf Rinne and Klaus Zimmermann ()

No 6100, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Discrimination in recruitment decisions is well documented. Anonymous job applications may reduce discriminatory behavior in hiring. This paper analyzes the potential of this approach in a randomized experiment with fresh Ph.D. economists on the academic job market using data from a European-based economic research institution. If included in the treatment group, characteristics such as name, gender, age, contact details and nationality were removed. Results show that anonymous job applications are in general not associated with a higher or lower probability to receive an invitation for a job interview. However, we find that while female applicants have a higher probability to receive an interview invitation than male applicants with standard applications, this difference disappears with anonymous job applications. We furthermore present evidence that certain professional signals are weighted differently with and without anonymization.

Keywords: Ph.D. economists; discrimination; randomized experiment; anonymous job applications; annual job market (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J20 J44 J79 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 17 pages
Date: 2011-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp, nep-lab, nep-ltv and nep-sog
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (7)

Published - published in: Economics Letters , 2012, 117 (2), 441-444

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