Join BookitisSave favorites, build lists, and follow creators.

Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?

Work detail

Bookitis Pick
Cover for Are Emily and Greg more employable than Lakisha and Jamal?
AE
Image source: Open Library
Marianne Bertrand1 editions

We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market. We respond with fictitious resumes tohelp-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers. To manipulate perception of race, each resume is randomly assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name. The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews. We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume. For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase. Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race. The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries. Federal contractors and employers who list "Equal Opportunity Employer" in their ad discriminate as much as other employers. We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names. These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market. Keywords: Discrimination, Race, Field Studies, Randomized Experiments, Stereotypes, Prejudice Statistical Discrimination, Hiring Practices, Employment, Human Capital. JEL Classification: J7, J71, J23, J24, J63, J82, C93.

Overview

Shared work-level identity and catalog context.

1 credited authorSearch language english

Bookitis keeps work pages focused on the shared book identity and the editions that actually belong to it. Unrelated books should not appear here as primary content.

Contributors

People credited with this work in the active catalog.

  • Marianne Bertrand

    Author profile in the active Bookitis catalog

    Open Author

Editions

Publication-specific versions linked to this work only.