TY - UNPB

T1 - Experimentel Evidence of Discrimination in the Labour Market

T2 - Intersections between ethnicity, gender, and socioeconomic status

AU - Dahl, Malte

AU - Krog, Niels

PY - 2017/10/30

Y1 - 2017/10/30

N2 - This paper presents evidence of ethnic discrimination in the recruitment process from a field experiment conducted in the Danish labour market. In a correspondence experiment, fictitious job applications were randomly assigned either a Danish or Middle Eastern-sounding name and sent to real job openings. In addition to providing evidence on the extent of ethnic discrimination in the Danish labour market, the study offers two novel contributions to the literature more generally. First, because a majority of European correspondence experiments have relied solely on applications with male aliases, there is limited evidence on the way gender and ethnicity interact across different occupations. By randomly assigning gender and ethnicity, this study suggests that ethnic discrimination is strongly moderated by gender: minority males are consistently subject to a much larger degree of discrimination than minority females across different types of occupations. Second, this study addresses a key critique of previous correspondence experiments by examining the potential confounding effect of socioeconomic status related to the names used to represent distinct ethnic groups. The results support the notion that differences in call-backs are caused exclusively by the ethnic traits.

AB - This paper presents evidence of ethnic discrimination in the recruitment process from a field experiment conducted in the Danish labour market. In a correspondence experiment, fictitious job applications were randomly assigned either a Danish or Middle Eastern-sounding name and sent to real job openings. In addition to providing evidence on the extent of ethnic discrimination in the Danish labour market, the study offers two novel contributions to the literature more generally. First, because a majority of European correspondence experiments have relied solely on applications with male aliases, there is limited evidence on the way gender and ethnicity interact across different occupations. By randomly assigning gender and ethnicity, this study suggests that ethnic discrimination is strongly moderated by gender: minority males are consistently subject to a much larger degree of discrimination than minority females across different types of occupations. Second, this study addresses a key critique of previous correspondence experiments by examining the potential confounding effect of socioeconomic status related to the names used to represent distinct ethnic groups. The results support the notion that differences in call-backs are caused exclusively by the ethnic traits.

M3 - Working paper

T3 - Working paper

SP - 1

EP - 53

BT - Experimentel Evidence of Discrimination in the Labour Market

PB - Department of Political Science, University of Copenhagen

CY - Copenhagen

ER -