Do Employers Discriminate Less If Vacancies Are Difficult to Fill? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Stijn Baert, Bart Cockx, Niels Gheyle () and Cora Vandamme ()
Additional contact information
Niels Gheyle: Ghent University
Cora Vandamme: Ghent University

No 7145, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: We empirically test the relationship between hiring discrimination and labour market tightness at the level of the occupation. To this end, we conduct a correspondence test in the youth labour market. In line with theoretical expectations, we find that, compared to natives, candidates with a foreign sounding name are equally often invited to a job interview if they apply for occupations for which vacancies are difficult to fill, but they have to send twice as many applications for occupations for which labour market tightness is low. Our findings are robust against various sensitivity checks.

Keywords: labour market tightness; ethnic discrimination; field experiments; hiring discrimination (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: C93 J15 J21 J24 J42 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 30 pages
Date: 2013-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-dem, nep-exp and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (29)

Published - revised version published as 'Is There Less Discrimination in Occupations Where Recruitment Is Difficult?' in: Industrial and Labor Relations , 2015, 68 (3), 467 - 500

Downloads: (external link)
https://docs.iza.org/dp7145.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: Do Employers Discriminate Less if Vacancies are Difficult to Fill? Evidence from a Field Experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Do Employers Discriminate Less if Vacancies Are Difficult to Fill? Evidence From a Field Experiment (2013)
Working Paper: Do Employers Discriminate Less if Vacancies Are Difficult to Fill? Evidence From a Field Experiment (2013)
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:iza:izadps:dp7145

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
IZA, Margard Ody, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA) IZA, P.O. Box 7240, D-53072 Bonn, Germany. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Holger Hinte ().