When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination

Pierre Cahuc, Carcillo, Stéphane, Andreea Minea and Marie-Anne Valfort ()

No 14028, CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers

Abstract: Based on a correspondence study conducted in France, we show that fictitious low-skilled applicants in the private sector are half as likely to be called back by the employers when they are of North African rather than French origin. By contrast, the origin of the fictitious applicants does not impact their callback rate in the public sector. We run a survey revealing that recruiters display similarly strong negative discriminatory attitudes towards North Africans in both sectors. We set out a model explaining why differences in discrimination at the stage of invitation for interviews can arise when recruiters display identical discriminatory attitudes in both sectors. The estimation of this model shows that discrimination at the invitation stage is a poor predictor of discrimination at the hiring stage. This suggests that many correspondence studies may fail to detect hiring discrimination and its extent.

Keywords: Discrimination; Correspondence studies; Public sector (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J45 J70 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2019-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (5)

Downloads: (external link)
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14028 (application/pdf)
CEPR Discussion Papers are free to download for our researchers, subscribers and members. If you fall into one of these categories but have trouble downloading our papers, please contact us at subscribers@cepr.org

Related works:
Working Paper: When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination (2019)
Working Paper: When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination (2019)
Working Paper: When Correspondence Studies Fail to Detect Hiring Discrimination (2019)
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:cpr:ceprdp:14028

Ordering information: This working paper can be ordered from
https://cepr.org/publications/DP14028

Access Statistics for this paper

More papers in CEPR Discussion Papers from C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers Centre for Economic Policy Research, 33 Great Sutton Street, London EC1V 0DX.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by ().