Will Job Testing Harm Minority Workers?

David Autor and David Scarborough

No 10763, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Because minorities typically fare poorly on standardized tests, job testing is thought to pose an equity-efficiency trade-off: testing improves selection but reduces minority hiring. We develop a conceptual framework to assess when this tradeoff is likely to apply and evaluate the evidence for such a trade-off using data from a national retail firm whose 1,363 stores switched from informal to test-based worker screening over the course of on year. We document that testing yielded more productive hires at this firm -- raising median tenure by 10-plus percent. Consistent with prior research, minorities performed worse on the test. Yet, testing had no measurable impact on minority hiring, and productivity gains were uniformly large among minorities and non-minorities. These results suggest that job testing raised the precision of screening without introducing additional negative information about minority applicants, most plausibly because both the job test and the informal screen that preceded it were unbiased.

JEL-codes: D63 D81 J15 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2004-09
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-ltv
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Citations: View citations in EconPapers (9)

Published as Autor, David and David Scarborough. "“Does Job Testing Harm Minority Workers? Evidence from Retail Establishments.” Quarterly Journal of Economics 123, 1 (November 2008): 219 – 277.

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