Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination

Marianne Bertrand and Sendhil Mullainathan

American Economic Review, 2004, vol. 94, issue 4, 991-1013

Abstract: We study race in the labor market by sending fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perceived race, resumes are randomly assigned African-American- or White-sounding names. White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. Callbacks are also more responsive to resume quality for White names than for African-American ones. The racial gap is uniform across occupation, industry, and employer size. We also find little evidence that employers are inferring social class from the names. Differential treatment by race still appears to still be prominent in the U. S. labor market.

Date: 2004
Note: DOI: 10.1257/0002828042002561
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1537)

Downloads: (external link)
http://www.aeaweb.org/articles.php?doi=10.1257/0002828042002561 (application/pdf)
http://www.aeaweb.org/aer/data/sept04_data_bertrand.zip (application/zip)
Access to full text is restricted to AEA members and institutional subscribers.

Related works:
Working Paper: Are emily and greg more employable than lakisha and jamal? A field experiment on labor market discrimination (2003)
Working Paper: Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination (2003)
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:aea:aecrev:v:94:y:2004:i:4:p:991-1013

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
https://www.aeaweb.org/journals/subscriptions

Access Statistics for this article

American Economic Review is currently edited by Esther Duflo

More articles in American Economic Review from American Economic Association Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Michael P. Albert ().