AME Labour Economics-seminarium i arbetsmarknadsekonomi vid Institutet för social forskning (SOFI):

Alan Benson från University of Minnesota presenterar Discrimination in Hiring: Evidence from Retail Sales, en studie gjord tillsammans med Simon Board och Moritz Meyer-ter-Vehn.

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Abstract

We propose a simple model of racial bias in hiring that encompasses three major theories: taste-based discrimination, screening discrimination, and complementary production. We derive a test that can distinguish these theories using the mean and variance of workers' productivity under managers of different pairs of races. We apply this test to study discrimination at a major U.S. retailer using data from around 50,000 newly-hired commission-based salespeople. White, black and Hispanic managers within the same store are significantly more likely to hire workers of their own race, consistent with all three theories. For white-Hispanic and black-Hispanic pairs, mean productivity is greater and productivity variance is lower when manager and worker races match, driven by greater productivity in lower-tail of the productivity distribution. For black-Hispanic pairs the evidence indicates screening discrimination; for white-Hispanic pairs it indicates some combination of screening discrimination and complementary production. Our tests for white-black pairs are less clear.