Adaptive Correspondence Experiments

Hadar Avivi, Patrick Kline, Evan Rose and Christopher Walters

No 28319, NBER Working Papers from National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc

Abstract: Correspondence experiments probe for discrimination by manipulating employer perceptions of applicant characteristics. We consider the gains from dynamically adapting the number and characteristics of fictitious applications to the sequence of employer responses received so far. Calibrating the employer callback process to data from a recent correspondence experiment by Nunley et al. (2015), we find it is possible to cut the number of applications required to detect a fixed number of discriminatory jobs roughly in half relative to the static benchmark design that sends the same number and mix of applications to all jobs. These gains are achieved primarily from abandoning jobs with very low callback probabilities and those that demonstrate a willingness to call black applicants.

JEL-codes: C9 J18 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2021-01
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp and nep-ore
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Published as Hadar Avivi & Patrick Kline & Evan Rose & Christopher Walters, 2021. "Adaptive Correspondence Experiments," AEA Papers and Proceedings, American Economic Association, vol. 111, pages 43-48, May.

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Journal Article: Adaptive Correspondence Experiments (2021)
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