Working Paper Series, Department of Economics, Uppsala University
No 2007:29:
Detecting discrimination in the hiring process: Evidence from an Internet-based search channel
Stefan Eriksson ()
and Jonas Lagerström ()
Abstract: This paper uses data from an Internet-based CV database to
investigate how factors which may be used as a basis for discrimination,
such as the searchers’ ethnicity, gender, age and employment status, affect
the number of contacts they receive from firms. Since we have access to
essentially the same information as the firms, we can handle the problems
associated with nobserved heterogeneity better than most existing studies
of discrimination. We find that, even when we control for other
differences, searchers who have non-Nordic names, are old or unemployed
receive significantly fewer contacts. Moreover, we find that this matters
for the hiring outcome: Searchers who receive more contacts have a higher
probability of actually getting hired.
Keywords: Job Search; Unobserved Heterogeneity; Discrimination; (follow links to similar papers)
JEL-Codes: J64; J71; (follow links to similar papers)
31 pages, December 12, 2007
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