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Do Employers Discriminate Less if Vacancies Are Difficult to Fill? Evidence From a Field Experiment

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Author Info

  • Stijn BAERT

    () (Ghent University - Sherppa)

  • Baert COCKX

    () (Ghent University - Sherppa, UCLouvain - IRES, IZA, CESifo)

  • Niels GHEYLE

    () (Ghent University - Sherppa)

  • Cora VANDAMME

    () (Ghent University - Sherppa)

Abstract

We empirically test the relationship between hiring discrimination and labour market tightness at the level of the occupation. To this end, we conduct a correspondence test in the youth labour market. In line with theoretical expectations, we find that, compared to natives, candidates with a foreign sounding name are equally often invited to a job interview if they apply for occupations for which vacancies are difficult to fill, but they have to send twice as many applications for occupations for which labour market tightness is low. Our findings are robust against various sensitivity checks.

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Bibliographic Info

Paper provided by Université catholique de Louvain, Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales (IRES) in its series Discussion Papers (IRES - Institut de Recherches Economiques et Sociales) with number 2013001.

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Length: 28
Date of creation: 23 Jan 2013
Date of revision:
Handle: RePEc:ctl:louvir:2013001

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Keywords: hiring discrimination; ethnic discrimination; labour market tightness; field experiments;

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References

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Blog mentions

As found by EconAcademics.org, the blog aggregator for Economics research:
  1. Discrimination is a luxury
    by Nicholas Gruen in Club Troppo on 2013-02-13 10:25:24

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