Can skills alleviate ethnic discrimination in hiring?

Alina Shirshikova, Frank Cörvers, Raymond Montizaan and Harald Pfeifer
Additional contact information
Alina Shirshikova: ROA / Human capital in the region
Frank Cörvers: RS: GSBE MORSE, RS: FdR Institute ITEM, RS: GSBE - MACIMIDE, ROA / Human capital in the region
Raymond Montizaan: RS: GSBE UM-BIC, ROA / Labour market and training
Harald Pfeifer: RS: GSBE other - not theme-related research, ROA / Labour market and training

No 2, ROA Research Memorandum from Maastricht University, Research Centre for Education and the Labour Market (ROA)

Abstract: This study investigates whether the social, digital, and analytical skills of job applicants, as well as their knowledge about the profession, can mitigate ethnic disparities in entry-level positions in the labour market. We conducted a survey experiment among a large, nationally representative sample of German firms that hire apprentices. We asked recruiters to evaluate the probability of inviting fictitious applicants to a job interview based on randomised characteristics, including ethnicity, skill quality, gender, time of residence, and education level. Our results show heterogeneous effects of skills on ethnic discrimination. While social skills help alleviate discrimination, our results indicate that discrimination intensifies at higher levels of knowledge about the profession, implying greater disparities due to ethnic discrimination at the top of the skill distribution. We also found that the effect of skills differs depending on the ethnicity of the applicant.

JEL-codes: I24 J15 J23 J24 J71 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2025-12-11
New Economics Papers: this item is included in nep-exp
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Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:unm:umaror:2025002

DOI: 10.26481/umaror.2025002

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