Learning to Discriminate on the Job

Alan Benson and Louis-Pierre Lepage ()
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Louis-Pierre Lepage: Swedish Institute for Social Research, Stockholm University, Postal: SOFI, Stockholm University, SE-106 91 Stockholm, Sweden

No 10/2023, Working Paper Series from Stockholm University, Swedish Institute for Social Research

Abstract: Using administrative records from a large national US retailer, we find managers learn to discriminate “on the job” as they gain experience hiring workers of different races. First, we find that negative and positive experiences with black hires seed the race of future hires, consistent with managers updating their beliefs about the productivity of worker groups. Second, experiences with black workers have a larger impact on future hiring than those with white workers, consistent with greater updating about their productivity. Third, early negative experiences with black workers yield particularly large and persistent declines in a manager’s subsequent black hiring, consistent with negative perceptions being slow to correct. Our results suggest that managers’ perceptions of worker groups evolve from their individual experiences in a way that systematically disadvantages minorities in the hiring process.

Keywords: labor market discrimination; managers; employer learning; belief formation (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 J24 J71 M50 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 68 pages
Date: 2023-04-30
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-hrm
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:hhs:sofiwp:2023_010

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