Magnus Carlsson, Abdulaziz Abrar Reshid and Dan-Olof Rooth
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signals living in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate whether there is unequal treatment in hiring depending on whether a job applicant signals living in a bad (deprived) neighborhood or in a good (affluent) neighborhood.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a field experiment where fictitious job applications were sent to employers with an advertised vacancy. Each job application was randomly assigned a residential address in either a bad or a good neighborhood. The measured outcome is the fraction of invitations for a job interview (the callback rate).
Findings
The authors find no evidence of general neighborhood signaling effects. However, job applicants with a foreign background have callback rates that are 42 percent lower if they signal living in a bad neighborhood rather than in a good neighborhood. In addition, the authors find that applicants with commuting times longer than 90 minutes have lower callback rates, and this is unrelated to the neighborhood signaling effect.
Originality/value
Empirical evidence of causal neighborhood effects on labor market outcomes is scant, and causal evidence on the mechanisms involved is even more scant. The paper provides such evidence.
Details
Keywords
Jens Agerström and Dan‐Olof Rooth
The aim of this paper is to examine whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold negative attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to examine whether Swedish employers implicitly/automatically hold negative attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims, an ethnic minority group subjected to substantial labor market discrimination in Sweden and, more specifically, associate members of this minority group with lower work productivity, as compared with native Swedes.
Design/methodology/approach
Adapted versions of the Implicit Association Test (IAT; Greenwald et al., 1998) designed to measure implicit attitudes and productivity stereotypes toward Arab‐Muslims were used. Corresponding explicit measures were administered.
Findings
The results clearly show that employers have stronger negative implicit attitudes toward Arab‐Muslims relative to native Swedes as well as implicitly perceiving Arab‐Muslims to be less productive than native Swedes. Notably, the explicit measures reveal much weaker negative associations.
Practical implications
Since Arab‐Muslims are automatically perceived as being less productive, the present findings suggest that negative implicit productivity stereotypes could have significant effects on labor market outcomes, such as when employers make hiring decisions. Given that many hiring decisions are presumably based on “gut‐feelings”, implicit attitudes and stereotypes, more so than their explicit counterparts, may exert a substantial impact on how employers contemplate and make decisions regarding human resources.
Originality/value
Whereas traditional research has focused on self‐conscious, explicit work‐related attitudes toward various ethnic minority groups, the study offers a novel approach to understanding work‐related prejudice.
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Keywords
Stijn Baert, Ann-Sofie De Meyer, Yentl Moerman and Eddy Omey
The purpose of this paper is to study the association between firm size and hiring discrimination against women, ethnic minorities and older job candidates.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to study the association between firm size and hiring discrimination against women, ethnic minorities and older job candidates.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors merge field experimental measures on unequal treatment with firm-level data. The resulting data enable the authors to assess whether discrimination varies by indicators of firm size, keeping other firm characteristics constant.
Findings
In contrast with the theoretical expectations, the authors find no evidence for an association between firm size and hiring discrimination. On the other hand, the authors do find suggestive evidence for hiring discrimination being lower in respect of public or non-profit firms (compared to commercial firms).
Social implications
To effectively combat hiring discrimination, one needs to understand its driving factors. In other words, to design adequate policy actions, targeted to the right employers in the right way, one has to gain insight into when individuals are discriminated in particular, i.e. into the moderators of labour market discrimination. In this study, the authors focus on firm size as a moderator of hiring discrimination.
Originality/value
Former contributions investigated this association within the context of ethnic discrimination only and included hardly any controls for other firm-level drivers of discrimination. The authors are the first to study the heterogeneity in discrimination by firm size with respect to multiple discrimination grounds and control for additional firm characteristics.