Are Suburban Firms More Likely to Discriminate Against African Americans?

This paper presents a test of the hypothesis that employers in suburban locations are more likely to discriminate against African Americans than are employers located in central cities. Using a difference-in-difference framework, we compare central-city/suburban differences in racial hiring outcomes for firms where a white person is in charge of hiring (white employers, for short) to similar geographic differences in outcomes for firms where a black person is in charge of hiring (black employers). We find that both suburban black and white employers hire fewer blacks than their central-city counterparts. Moreover, the central-city/suburban hiring gap among black employers is as large as, or larger than, that of white employers. Suburban black employers, however, receive many more applications from blacks and hire more blacks than do white firms in either location.