How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-to-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes

Qi Ge and Stephen Wu

American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 2024, vol. 16, issue 4, 254-79

Abstract: We test for labor market discrimination based on an understudied characteristic: name fluency. Analysis of recent economics PhD job candidates indicates that name difficulty is negatively related to the probability of landing an academic or tenure-track position and research productivity of initial institutional placement. Discrimination due to name fluency is also found using experimental data from prior audit studies. Within samples of African Americans (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004) and ethnic immigrants (Oreopoulos 2011), job applicants with less fluent names experience lower callback rates, and name complexity explains roughly between 10 and 50 percent of ethnic name penalties. The results are primarily driven by candidates with weaker résumés, suggesting that cognitive biases may contribute to the penalty of having a difficult-to-pronounce name.

JEL-codes: A11 J15 J23 J44 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2024
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (1)

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DOI: 10.1257/pol.20220611

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