Detecting Discrimination in Audit and Correspondence Studies

David Neumark

Journal of Human Resources, 2012, vol. 47, issue 4

Abstract: Audit studies testing for discrimination have been criticized because applicants from different groups may not appear identical to employers. Correspondence studies address this criticism by using fictitious paper applicants whose qualifications can be made identical across groups. However, Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show that group differences in the variance of unobservable determinants of productivity still can generate spurious evidence of discrimination in either direction. This paper shows how to recover an unbiased estimate of discrimination when the correspondence study includes variation in applicant characteristics that affect hiring. The method is applied to actual data and assessed using Monte Carlo methods.

Date: 2012
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (145)

Downloads: (external link)
http://jhr.uwpress.org/cgi/reprint/47/4/1128
A subscription is required to access pdf files. Pay per article is available.

Related works:
Working Paper: Detecting Discrimination in Audit and Correspondence Studies (2010)
Working Paper: Detecting Discrimination in Audit and Correspondence Studies (2010)
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:uwp:jhriss:v:47:y:2012:iv:1:p:1128-1157

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Human Resources from University of Wisconsin Press
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().