Employer Attitudes, the Marginal Employer and the Ethnic Wage Gap

Magnus Carlsson and Dan-Olof Rooth

No 6227, IZA Discussion Papers from Institute of Labor Economics (IZA)

Abstract: Ethnic minorities have lower wages compared to the ethnic majority in most EU-countries. However, to what extent these wage gaps are the result of prejudice toward ethnic minority workers is virtually unknown. This study sets out to examine what role prejudice play in the creation of the ethnic wage gap in one of Europe's most egalitarian countries, Sweden. The analysis takes into account the important distinction between average employer attitudes and the attitude of the marginal employer. Our results confirm that the attitudes of the marginal employer – but not those of the average employer – are important for the ethnic wage gap. This relationship becomes even stronger when potential measurement error and other forms of endogeneity are accounted for by controlling for a rich set of variables and implementing instrumental variable techniques.

Keywords: ethnic wage gap; attitudes; prejudice; marginal employer (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: J64 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Pages: 45 pages
Date: 2011-12
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-eur, nep-lab and nep-lma
References: View references in EconPapers View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (3)

Published - published in: Industrial Labor Relations Review, 2016, 69 (1), 227-252

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Journal Article: Employer Attitudes, the Marginal Employer, and the Ethnic Wage Gap (2016)
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