Experimental studies of discrimination in the labor market
On 13 October 2011 Alexey Zaharov (senior research fellow at the LCSR) and Alexey Bessudnov (research fellow at the Center for Advanced Studies) gave a talk on “Experimental studies of dicrimination in the labor market in Moscow".
The aim of the project is to measure the extent discrimination by ethnicity, age and sex in the labor market in Moscow. According to different estimates, there are about 1 to 2 mln migrants in Moscow. If Russia wants to avoid ethnic conflicts an efficient policy for the labor market should be developed so that immigrants are not confined to low-paid occupations.
There are two types of ethnic discrimination: taste-based and statistical. Taste-based discrimination implies that some people dislike certain groups of people and are ready to lose profit to avoid any interactions with them. In the case of statistical discrimination employers might have nothing in particular against some groups of people, but external appearance tells them about their unobserved characteristics. For example, an applicant’s name may indicate that he or she is an immigrant. The employer knows that immigrants have a high percent of fake diplomas and rejects this candidate.
Field experiments are an appropriate method for studying discrimination in the labor market as they make causal relationships easier to identify. British sociologists were the first to carry out experiments in the labor market in the 1960s. In the last twenty years the experiments became popular both within sociology and economics. A recent example is a study by Bertrand and Mullainathan (2004). These scholars conducted experimental research in Boston and Chicago (USA). 5,000 resumes which varied by race and quality of the applicants were sent to 1,300 job openings. The study found that the white names received 50% more callbacks for interviews than the black names. Carlsson and Rooth (2007) conducted a similar experiment in Stockholm and Gothenburg (Sweden). Swedish names received 50% more callbacks than Middle Eastern names.
The project presented by Alexey Zaharov and Alexey Bessudnov is based on a new experimental design compared to the previous studies of discrimination in the labor market. They are going to study several ethnic groups, some of which are not immigrants, but Russian citizens of other ethicity than Russians. Not only ethnicity will be taken into account, but also sex, age and education. 4,000 resumes will be sent out within four to six months and callback rates will be measured. The resumes will be randomly assigned to job offers from the most popular Russian job search websites in the following occupations: salesperson, accountant, secretary, lawer.
After the data collection stage statistical analysis will be performed. The researchers will look at the interactions between different variables. They anticipate that not only ethnicity, sex and age affect the extent of discrimination in the labor market, but it also varies depending on the interactions between these variables.