IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/iza/izadps/dp8517.html

Unintended Effects of Anonymous Resumes

Author

Listed:
  • Behaghel, Luc

    (Paris School of Economics)

  • Crépon, Bruno

    (CREST)

  • Le Barbanchon, Thomas

    (Bocconi University)

Abstract

We evaluate an experimental program in which the French public employment service anonymized resumes for firms that were hiring. Firms were free to participate or not; participating firms were then randomly assigned to receive either anonymous resumes or name-bearing ones. We find that participating firms become less likely to interview and hire minority candidates when receiving anonymous resumes. We show how these unexpected results can be explained by the self-selection of firms into the program and by the fact that anonymization prevents the attenuation of negative signals when the candidate belongs to a minority.

Suggested Citation

  • Behaghel, Luc & Crépon, Bruno & Le Barbanchon, Thomas, 2014. "Unintended Effects of Anonymous Resumes," IZA Discussion Papers 8517, IZA Network @ LISER.
    • Handle: RePEc:iza:izadps:dp8517
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://docs.iza.org/dp8517.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Other versions of this item:

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Nicola Persico, 2009. "Racial Profiling? Detecting Bias Using Statistical Evidence," Annual Review of Economics, Annual Reviews, vol. 1(1), pages 229-254, May.
    2. repec:adr:anecst:y:2010:i:99-100:p:01 is not listed on IDEAS
    3. Krause, Annabelle & Rinne, Ulf & Zimmermann, Klaus F., 2012. "Anonymous job applications of fresh Ph.D. economists," Economics Letters, Elsevier, vol. 117(2), pages 441-444.
    4. Denis Fougère & Yannick L’Horty & Pierre Morin, 2002. "Introduction," Revue économique, Presses de Sciences-Po, vol. 53(6), pages 1111-1126.
    5. 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.
    6. David H. Autor & David Scarborough, 2008. "Does Job Testing Harm Minority Workers? Evidence from Retail Establishments," The Quarterly Journal of Economics, President and Fellows of Harvard College, vol. 123(1), pages 219-277.
    7. Kroft, Kory & Lange, Fabian & Notowidigdo, Matthew J., 2012. "Duration Dependence and Labor Market Conditions: Theory and Evidence from a Field Experiment," CLSSRN working papers clsrn_admin-2012-21, Vancouver School of Economics, revised 28 Sep 2012.
    8. Cecilia Rouse & Claudia Goldin, 2000. "Orchestrating Impartiality: The Impact of "Blind" Auditions on Female Musicians," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 90(4), pages 715-741, September.
    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. Ulf Rinne, 2025. "Anonymous job applications and hiring discrimination," World of Labour, LISER, pages 483-483, January.
    2. Lee, Logan M. & Waddell, Glen R., 2021. "Diversity and the timing of preference in hiring decisions," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 184(C), pages 432-459.
    3. Moshe A. Barach & John Horton, 2017. "How Do Employers Use Compensation History?: Evidence from a Field Experiment," CESifo Working Paper Series 6559, CESifo.
    4. Ballance, Joshua & Clifford, Robert & Shoag, Daniel, 2020. "“No more credit score”: Employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 63(C).
    5. Chen, Yiu Por (Vincent) & Zhang, Yuan, 2018. "A decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban China (2002–2013)," World Development, Elsevier, vol. 110(C), pages 1-12.
    6. Gautam Rao, 2019. "Familiarity Does Not Breed Contempt: Generosity, Discrimination, and Diversity in Delhi Schools," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 109(3), pages 774-809, March.
    7. Robert Clifford & Daniel Shoag, 2016. "“No more credit score”: employer credit check bans and signal substitution," Working Papers 16-10, Federal Reserve Bank of Boston.
    8. Ohto Kanninen & Sanni Kiviholma & Tuomo Virkola, 2023. "Anatomy of An Anonymous Hiring Pilot," Working Papers 338, Työn ja talouden tutkimus LABORE, The Labour Institute for Economic Research LABORE.
    9. Joanna N. Lahey & Douglas R. Oxley, 2021. "Discrimination at the Intersection of Age, Race, and Gender: Evidence from an Eye‐Tracking Experiment," Journal of Policy Analysis and Management, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 40(4), pages 1083-1119, September.
    10. Annabelle Krause & Ulf Rinne & Klaus Zimmermann, 2012. "Anonymous job applications in Europe," IZA Journal of European Labor Studies, Springer;Forschungsinstitut zur Zukunft der Arbeit GmbH (IZA), vol. 1(1), pages 1-20, December.
    11. Bryson, Alex & Chevalier, Arnaud, 2015. "Is there a taste for racial discrimination amongst employers?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 34(C), pages 51-63.
    12. John M. Nunley & Adam Pugh & Nicholas Romero & Richard Alan Seals, Jr., 2014. "Unemployment, Underemployment, and Employment Opportunities: Results from a Correspondence Audit of the Labor Market for College Graduates," Auburn Economics Working Paper Series auwp2014-04, Department of Economics, Auburn University.
    13. Adnan, Wifag & Arin, K. Peren & Charness, Gary & Lacomba, Juan A. & Lagos, Francisco, 2022. "Which social categories matter to people: An experiment," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 193(C), pages 125-145.
    14. Amanda Agan & Sonja Starr, 2016. "Ban the Box, Criminal Records, and Statistical Discrimination: A Field Experiment," Working Papers 598, Princeton University, Department of Economics, Industrial Relations Section..
    15. Andreas Leibbrandt & John A. List, 2018. "Do Equal Employment Opportunity Statements Backfire? Evidence From A Natural Field Experiment On Job-Entry Decisions," NBER Working Papers 25035, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    16. Raymond Fisman & Daniel Paravisini & Vikrant Vig, 2017. "Cultural Proximity and Loan Outcomes," American Economic Review, American Economic Association, vol. 107(2), pages 457-492, February.
    17. Azmat, Ghazala & Petrongolo, Barbara, 2014. "Gender and the labor market: What have we learned from field and lab experiments?," Labour Economics, Elsevier, vol. 30(C), pages 32-40.
    18. Marianne Bertrand & Esther Duflo, 2016. "Field Experiments on Discrimination," NBER Working Papers 22014, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    19. Guido W. Imbens, 2020. "Potential Outcome and Directed Acyclic Graph Approaches to Causality: Relevance for Empirical Practice in Economics," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 58(4), pages 1129-1179, December.
    20. David Neumark, 2018. "Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination," Journal of Economic Literature, American Economic Association, vol. 56(3), pages 799-866, September.

    More about this item

    Keywords

    ;
    ;
    ;

    JEL classification:

    • J71 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Hiring and Firing
    • J78 - Labor and Demographic Economics - - Labor Discrimination - - - Public Policy (including comparable worth)

    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:dp8517. 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: Mark Fallak (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/izaaalu.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.