IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp4947.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Does Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence from a Field Experiment

Author

Listed:
  • Booth, Alison L.

    (Australian National University)

  • Leigh, Andrew

    (Parliament of Australia)

  • Varganova, Elena

    (Australian National University)

Abstract

We conduct a large-scale audit discrimination study to measure labor market discrimination across different minority groups in Australia – a country where one quarter of the population was born overseas. To denote ethnicity, we use distinctively Anglo-Saxon, Indigenous, Italian, Chinese, and Middle Eastern names, and our goal is a comparison across multiple ethnic groups rather than focusing on a single minority as in most other studies. In all cases, we applied for entry-level jobs and submitted a CV showing that the candidate had attended high school in Australia. We find economically and statistically significant differences in callback rates, suggesting that ethnic minority candidates would need to apply for more jobs in order to receive the same number of interviews. These differences vary systematically across groups, with Italians (a more established migrant group) suffering less discrimination than Chinese and Middle Easterners (who have typically arrived more recently). We also explore various explanations for our empirical findings.

Suggested Citation

  • Booth, Alison L. & Leigh, Andrew & Varganova, Elena, 2010. "Does Racial and Ethnic Discrimination Vary Across Minority Groups? Evidence from a Field Experiment," IZA Discussion Papers 4947, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
  • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4947
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp4947.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Deborah A. Cobb-Clark, 2003. "Public policy and the labor market adjustment of new immigrants to Australia," Journal of Population Economics, Springer;European Society for Population Economics, vol. 16(4), pages 655-681, November.
    2. P. A. Riach & J. Rich, 2002. "Field Experiments of Discrimination in the Market Place," Economic Journal, Royal Economic Society, vol. 112(483), pages 480-518, November.
    3. Philip Oreopoulos, 2009. "Why Do Skilled Immigrants Struggle in the Labor Market? A Field Experiment with Six Thousand Resumes," NBER Working Papers 15036, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    4. Carlsson, Magnus & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2007. "Evidence of ethnic discrimination in the Swedish labor market using experimental data," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 14(4), pages 716-729, August.
    5. Peter A. Riach & Judith Rich, 2004. "Deceptive Field Experiments of Discrimination: Are they Ethical?," Kyklos, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 57(3), pages 457-470, August.
    6. Stéphane Mahuteau & P.N. (Raja) Junankar, 2008. "Do Migrants get Good Jobs in Australia? The Role of Ethnic Networks in Job Search," The Economic Record, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 84(s1), pages 115-130, September.
    7. Kenneth J. Arrow, 1998. "What Has Economics to Say about Racial Discrimination?," Journal of Economic Perspectives, American Economic Association, vol. 12(2), pages 91-100, Spring.
    8. Marianne Bertrand & Sendhil Mullainathan, 2004. "Are Emily and Greg More Employable Than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 94(4), pages 991-1013, September.
    9. Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2007. "Implicit Discrimination in Hiring: Real World Evidence," IZA Discussion Papers 2764, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    10. Bursell, Moa, 2007. "What's in a name? A field experiment test for the existence of ethnic discrimination in the hiring process," SULCIS Working Papers 2007:7, Stockholm University, Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS.
    11. Booth, Alison & Leigh, Andrew, 2010. "Do employers discriminate by gender? A field experiment in female-dominated occupations," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 107(2), pages 236-238, May.
    12. Riach, Peter A & Rich, Judith, 1991. "Testing for Racial Discrimination in the Labour Market," Cambridge Journal of Economics, Cambridge Political Economy Society, vol. 15(3), pages 239-256, September.
    13. Becker, Gary S., 1971. "The Economics of Discrimination," University of Chicago Press Economics Books, University of Chicago Press, edition 2, number 9780226041162, April.
    14. repec:feb:natura:0058 is not listed on IDEAS
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Jacquemet, Nicolas & Yannelis, Constantine, 2012. "Indiscriminate discrimination: A correspondence test for ethnic homophily in the Chicago labor market," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 19(6), pages 824-832.
    2. Eva O. Arceo-Gomez & Raymundo M. Campos-Vazquez, 2014. "Race and Marriage in the Labor Market: A Discrimination Correspondence Study in a Developing Country," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 104(5), pages 376-380, May.
    3. Matthieu Manant & Serge Pajak & Nicolas Soulié, 2019. "Can social media lead to labor market discrimination? Evidence from a field experiment," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 28(2), pages 225-246, April.
    4. Anthony Edo & Nicolas Jacquemet & Constantine Yannelis, 2019. "Language skills and homophilous hiring discrimination: Evidence from gender and racially differentiated applications," Review of Economics of the Household, Springer, vol. 17(1), pages 349-376, March.
    5. Stefan Eriksson & Per Johansson & Sophie Langenskiöld, 2017. "What is the right profile for getting a job? A stated choice experiment of the recruitment process," Empirical Economics, Springer, vol. 53(2), pages 803-826, September.
    6. Carlsson, Magnus & Fumarco, Luca & Rooth, Dan-Olof, 2013. "Artifactual Evidence of Discrimination in Correspondence Studies? A Replication of the Neumark Method," IZA Discussion Papers 7619, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    7. Gaddis, S. Michael, 2018. "An Introduction to Audit Studies in the Social Sciences," SocArXiv e5hfc, Center for Open Science.
    8. Arai, Mahmood & Bursell, Moa & Nekby, Lena, 2008. "Between Meritocracy and Ethnic Discrimination: The Gender Difference," SULCIS Working Papers 2008:2, Stockholm University, Linnaeus Center for Integration Studies - SULCIS.
    9. Stijn Baert, 2014. "Career lesbians. Getting hired for not having kids?," Industrial Relations Journal, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 45(6), pages 543-561, November.
    10. Stijn Baert & Ann-Sophie De Pauw & Nick Deschacht, 2016. "Do Employer Preferences Contribute to Sticky Floors?," ILR Review, Cornell University, ILR School, vol. 69(3), pages 714-736, May.
    11. Tito Boeri & Jan van Ours, 2013. "The Economics of Imperfect Labor Markets: Second Edition," Economics Books, Princeton University Press, edition 1, number 10142.
    12. Manant, Matthieu & Pajak, Serge & Soulié, Nicolas, 2014. "Do recruiters 'like' it? Online social networks and privacy in hiring: a pseudo-randomized experiment," MPRA Paper 56845, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    13. Booth, Alison L., 2009. "Gender and competition," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 16(6), pages 599-606, December.
    14. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2017. "Racial discrimination and white first name adoption: a field experiment in the Australian labour market," Working Papers 2017-15, University of Sydney, School of Economics.
    15. Mahmood Arai & Moa Bursell & Lena Nekby, 2011. "The Reverse Gender Gap in Ethnic Discrimination: Employer Priors against Men and Women with Arabic Names," DULBEA Working Papers 11-09, ULB -- Universite Libre de Bruxelles.
    16. Chowdhury, Shyamal & Ooi, Evarn & Slonim, Robert, 2020. "Racial Discrimination and White First Name Adoption: Evidence from a Correspondence Study in the Australian Labour Market," IZA Discussion Papers 13208, Institute of Labor Economics (IZA).
    17. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    18. Kevin Lang & Jee-Yeon K. Lehmann, 2012. "Racial Discrimination in the Labor Market: Theory and Empirics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 50(4), pages 959-1006, December.
    19. Valfort, Marie-Anne, 2020. "Anti-Muslim discrimination in France: Evidence from a field experiment," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 135(C).
    20. Baert, Stijn & Norga, Jennifer & Thuy, Yannick & Van Hecke, Marieke, 2016. "Getting grey hairs in the labour market. An alternative experiment on age discrimination," Journal of Economic Psychology, Elsevier, vol. 57(C), pages 86-101.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    employment; discrimination; field experiments;
    All these keywords.

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • C93 - Mathematical and Quantitative Methods - - Design of Experiments - - - Field Experiments

    NEP fields

    This paper has been announced in the following NEP Reports:

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp4947. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Holger Hinte (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaade.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.