The Dynamics of Referral Hiring and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Brazil

Conrad Miller and Ian Schmutte

No 29246, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: We study how referral hiring contributes to racial inequality in firm-level labor demand over the firm's life cycle using data from Brazil. We consider a search model where referral networks are segregated, firms are more informed about the match quality of referred candidates, and some referrals are made by non-referred employees. Consistent with the model, we find that firms are more likely to hire candidates and less likely to dismiss employees of the same race as the founder, but these differences diminish as firms' cumulative hires increase. Referral hiring helps to explain racial differences in dismissals, seniority, and employer size.

JEL-codes: J71 M51 Z13 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-bec, nep-hrm, nep-isf and nep-lma
Note: LS
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29246.pdf (application/pdf)

Related works:
Working Paper: The Dynamics of Referral Hiring and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Brazil (2021)
Working Paper: The Dynamics of Referral Hiring and Racial Inequality: Evidence from Brazil (2021)
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:nbr:nberwo:29246

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
http://www.nber.org/papers/w29246

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc National Bureau of Economic Research, 1050 Massachusetts Avenue Cambridge, MA 02138, U.S.A.. Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().