Gender discrimination in China: Experimental evidence from the job market for college graduates

This paper examines employment-related gender discrimination during the initial stages of a hiring process. It specifically focuses on recent college graduates in China. By examining firms’ responses to fictitious resumes with randomly generated information on gender and other key attributes of applicants (e.g., school reputation, student's academic achievement, and leadership experiences), this study is able to separate the effect of gender on a student's potential for getting an on-site interview from the confounding effects of other factors. The findings reveal that, with all other factors remaining constant, female applicants, on average, are less likely to be invited by hiring firms to on-site interviews as compared with their male counterparts. Furthermore, gender discrimination in computer and mathematics, architecture and engineering, and sales occupations appears to be driving the results of this study. The qualitative evidence based on interviews with firm recruiters suggests that the findings of this study are generally consistent with the role congruity theory of prejudice in psychology literature. While the finding that the quality of a job candidate (academic achievement and leadership experience) does not reduce gender discrimination offers some evidence to support a taste-based discrimination view, we do not have enough evidence to support a statistical discrimination view.     

Indirect Re–employment Wage Discrimination

This paper looks at unemployed individuals and investigates wage differences generated by re–employment selection. It shows that discriminatory re–employment selection can result, indirectly, in discriminatory re–employment pay. A Heckman two–stage selection model is combined with an extension of Gomulka–Stern non–linear decompositions to explain how re–employment selection generates indirect discrimination. The paper uses data from pre–unification Germany in the late 1980s and finds that female human capital suffers more from unemployment and that the market is harsher to males for becoming unemployed. New policies should encourage a regime where the hiring process is more transparent and hiring decisions are monitored on a regular basis.     

COLLECTIVE REPUTATION AND THE DYNAMICS OF STATISTICAL DISCRIMINATION

Economists have developed theoretical models identifying self‐fulfilling expectations as an important source of statistical discrimination practices. The static models dominating the literature, however, may leave the false impression that a bad equilibrium is as fragile as a “bubble” and can burst at any moment when expectations flip. By developing a dynamic version of the model, we clarify the limits of expectations‐related fragility. Even if group members can coordinate their expectations about future employer behavior, a group with a poor initial collective reputation may still be unable to recover its reputation, implying that the once‐developed discriminatory outcomes can be long‐standing.     

A bivariate probit approach to the determination of employment: a study of teen employment differentials in Los Angeles County

Following a bivariate probit approach and using the 1990 Public Use Microdata Samples (PUMS) for Los Angeles County, this study shows that the employment of teenage workers depends on both the worker's participation decision as well as the employer's hiring decision. Omission of the role of participation decision from the estimation of employment probability yields misleading evidence of hiring discrimination against Blacks. This evidence, however, disappears when the participation and hiring equations are estimated jointly in a bivariate framework. The study finds no evidence of discrimination against females and Latinos. In addition, the study shows that family, household and neighbourhood characteristics play significant roles in the determination of teen employment.     

Costless discrimination and unequal achievements in an experimental tournament

We investigate the emergence of discrimination in an experiment where individuals affiliated to different groups compete for a monetary prize, submitting independent bids to an auctioneer. The auctioneer receives perfect information about the bids (there is no statistical discrimination), and she has no monetary incentive to favor the members of her own group (the bidders are symmetric). We observe nonetheless some discrimination by auctioneers, who tend to assign the prize more frequently to a member of their own group when two or more players put forward the highest bid. Out-group bidders react to this bias and reduce significantly their bids, causing an average decay of their earnings throughout the game, with cumulative effects that generate unequal outcomes. Because the initial bias is costless, such mechanism can survive even in a competitive market, providing a rationale for the long-run persistence of discrimination.     

The role of hard-to-obtain information on ability for the school-to-work transition

When information about the abilities of job seekers is difficult to obtain, statistical discrimination by employers may be an efficient strategy in the hiring and wage-setting process. In this article, we use a unique, longitudinal survey that follows the PISA 2000 students in their early educational and work–life careers. We find that a deviance in the PISA test scores from what one would have predicted based on easy-to-obtain observable characteristics influences the probability of succeeding in the transition from compulsory schooling to a firm-based apprenticeship significantly but in a non-symmetric way. Only those who had a test result below their predicted result have significantly lower chances of getting an apprenticeship. We also find evidence that the importance of hard-to-obtain information on ability is further revealed in the course of the apprenticeship.     

Discrimination and the unemployment durations of white and black males

In this study we develop a model to decompose the longer unemployment duration of blacks into discriminatory and non-discriminatory components. By extending Becker's theory of discrimination to job-search theory, the discriminatory component is seen to be the result of two separate effects. First, a white treatment advantage shortens the unemployment duration of whites because they receive more frequent and higher wage offers than would prevail in the absence of discrimination for working alongside blacks. Second, a black treatment disadvantage lengthens the jobless spell of blacks because blacks receive lower wage offers than would prevail without discrimination as discriminating employers extract quasi-rents from their labour. We estimate our model using date from the CPS Displaced Workers Survey. The results show that 3.81 of the 4.58 weeks longer unemployment spell for blacks is due to discrimination, with 3.11 weeks resulting from the white treatment advantage, and 0.7 weeks emanating from the black treatment disadvantage.     

Interactive team reasoning: A contribution to the theory of co-operation

This paper describes interactions between agents who sometimes choose as individuals and sometimes as members of teams. Choosing as a member of a team entails not only being motivated by the team's objective, but also a distinctive pattern of reasoning: an agent who “team reasons” computes, and chooses her component in, aprofile evaluated using the team's objective function. It is not assumed that a given agent team reasons for a particular team; there may be more than one team, and which she reasons for is here treated probabilistically. Ordinary reasoning is a special case in which the team is a singleton. The framework therefore encompasses interactions paradigmatic in the theory of co-operative behaviour in which agents may choose either for the group of for themselves. The hypothesis that people may team reason if and when they are group motivated can, it is shown, explain some puzzling aspects of co-operative behaviour in a new way.     

Estimation of income elasticities from cross-section data

Using Johnson's decomposition technique, this paper demonstrates that the disappearance of the gap between female and male unemployment rates in the United States during the last decade results partly from a general hiring policy that is favourable to women workers. This conclusion holds for workers in five out of eight occupational subsamples considered. The sign and size of unexplained female - male unemployment rate differential estimated from 1969, 1977 and 1987 CPS data suggest that hiring discrimination against females in the US labour market has declined considerably during the last two decades. The study also supports the earlier finding that the growth of employment in government and in the female dominated service sector, and migration of workers from the South to other regions contribute significantly to the convergence of male and female unemployment rates in the 1980s.     

Asymmetric information, strategic behavior, and discrimination in the labor market

Summary  The neoclassical model of labor market discrimination assumes the presence of either prejudiced preferences, biased assessments of worker productivity, or monopsony power. We show that when market agents control asymmetric information, strategic behavior can induce discriminatory hiring practices even when these market features are absent. Moreover, strategic interaction many distort public policies to the point of harming the segments of the work force they were designed to support. Received: January 3, 1996 revised version April 29, 1996     

Is ethnic discrimination due to distaste or statistics?

Employing a vignette experiment, we test the empirical importance of key attitudes underlying the models of taste-based and statistical discrimination in explaining ethnic hiring discrimination. We find that employer concern that co-workers and customers prefer collaborating with natives drives discrimination.     

DISCRIMINATION IN A MODEL OF CONTESTS WITH INCOMPLETE INFORMATION ABOUT ABILITY

We study contests with private information and identical contestants, where contestants' efforts and innate abilities generate output of varying qualities. The designer's revenue depends on the quality of the output, and she offers a reward to the contestant achieving the highest quality. We characterize the equilibrium behavior, outcomes, and payoffs for both nondiscriminatory and discriminatory (where the reward is contestant‐dependent) contests. We derive conditions under which the designer obtains a larger payoff when using a discriminatory contest and describe settings, where these conditions are satisfied.     

Affirmative Action and Corporate Compliance in South Korea

Abstract

The Affirmative Action Act was introduced in South Korea in 2006 to increase female employment and correct discriminatory hiring practices. Using the combined data sets of survey and the Act's implementation plan, this paper provides logit estimation results to examine empirically how political perceptions or attitudes of firms influence corporate noncompliance with the Act. According to a corporate personnel manager survey, affirmative action was initially pursued as a campaign pledge by the liberal party (the Korea Democratic Party) to attract women's votes, and took on a looser shape as the government compromised with the business sector after an election. A weak enforcement structure ultimately diluted the effects of the Act. A logit analysis indicates that noncompliance is more probable in companies that perceive affirmative action as part of a design to achieve political goals, and compliance is more probable in companies that feel it is likely to improve corporate management.     

Savings and default

We develop a model in which individuals compete for a fixed pool of prizes by investing effort in a contest. Individuals belong to two separate and identifiable groups. We say that the contest is discriminatory if a lower share of prizes is reserved for one group than for the other. We show that it can be difficult for an observer to detect the presence or absence of discrimination in the contest, as both regimes can be observationally equivalent. In particular, one group’s belief that it is allocated a lower share of prizes than the other group can be consistent with observed data even if no such group quotas actually exist. Conversely, the belief that the contest does not discriminate can be consistent with data when, in fact, discrimination exists. Incorrect beliefs will therefore not be revised, as the contest generates no evidence to the contrary.     

Wage discrimination and antidiscrimination policy in unionized industries

We consider industries where the equally skilled workers/members of firm-specific monopoly unions can be grouped according to different reservation wages. We show that, in absence of active antidiscrimination policy, discriminatory wage contracts across groups of employees may emerge, in equilibrium, under either oligopoly or a perfectly competitive product market. We subsequently propose that to combat wage discrimination a benevolent policy maker should under either market structure subsidize the employment of the low reservation wage group. The reason is that taxing wage discrimination, as an alternative antidiscrimination policy, always entails a welfare loss relative to the no policy/wage discrimination status quo.     

Did the 2016 election cause changes in substance use? An intersectional approach

This paper examines the impact of the 2016 election on substance use. One of Donald Trump's major campaign initiatives was to build a wall at the American/Mexican border, and he frequently made negative comments about various underrepresented groups. I hypothesize that this unorthodox rhetoric, coupled with Donald Trump's proposed policies during his campaign, created an exogenous shock of discrimination for women, and ethnic and racial minority groups when he was elected. The Behavioral Risk Factor Surveillance System dataset, which has a variety of health measures and demographic information compiled at the individual level, is utilized to empirically examine the hypothesis. I examine the average treatment effects of the election using a difference-in-differences estimation strategy. The results indicate that there has been an increase in cigarette use for Hispanic individuals. These results highlight the impact that discriminatory rhetoric by political leaders and public figures has on marginalized groups within society. Policy implications include new ways to target substance use by targeting discrimination.     

VOTING AND SOCIAL PRESSURE UNDER IMPERFECT INFORMATION

We develop a model in which costly voting in a large, two‐party election is a sequentially rational choice of strategic, self‐interested players who can reward fellow voters by forming stronger ties in a network formation coordination game. The predictions match a variety of stylized facts, including explaining why an individual's voting behavior may depend on what she knows about her friends' actions. Players have imperfect information about others' voting behavior, and we find that some degree of privacy may be necessary for voting in equilibrium, enabling hypocritical but useful social pressure. Our framework applies to any costly prosocial behavior.     

Gender discrimination,inflation, and the business cycle

Empirical evidence suggests that women are discriminated against in the labor market. We analyze the effects of taste-based and statistical gender discrimination on business cycle and inflation dynamics by including unpaid household production, two-agent households, and discriminatory firm behavior in a tractable New Keynesian model. After a negative demand shock, we find that the economic downturn is more severe in comparison to a non-discriminatory environment, as the shock implies an increase in the inefficient utilization of female and male productivity. Furthermore, the working time allocation between women and men becomes more inefficient. Moreover, we show that discrimination implies a lower transmission of expansionary monetary policy shocks on inflation. Overall, taste-based discrimination leads to larger macroeconomic distortions, while statistical discrimination implies higher intra-household inefficiencies.     

Do employers avoid hiring workers from poor neighborhoods? Experimental evidence from the real labor market*

We investigate whether employers avoid hiring workers who live in neighborhoods with low socio-economic status and/or with long commuting times. In a large-scale field experiment in the Swedish labor market, we sent more than 4,000 fictitious résumés, with randomly assigned information about the applicants' residential locations, to firms with advertised vacancies. Our findings show that commuting time has a negative effect on the likelihood of being contacted by an employer, while the socio-economic status of a neighborhood does not appear to be important. These results offer guidance for policymakers who are responsible for reversing segregation patterns.     

Beneficial collusion in corruption control: The case of nonmonetary penalties

We analyze a corruption model where a principal seeks to control an agent's corruption by supplementing a costless noncollusive outside detector such as the media with a collusive internal supervisor. The principal's objective is to minimize the overall costs, made up of enforcement costs and social costs of corruption. If the penalties on the corrupt agent and a failing supervisor are nonmonetary in nature and yet the two parties can engage in monetary side-transfers, the principal may stand to benefit by allowing supervisor–agent collusion. This benefit may even prompt the principal to actively encourage collusion by hiring a dishonest supervisor in strict preference over an honest supervisor.