Customer Discrimination and Employment Outcomes: Theory and Evidence from the French Labor Market

Abstract

The paper investigates the link between the over-exposure of African immigrants to unemployment in France and their under-representation in jobs in contact with customers. We build a two-sector matching model with ethnic sector-specific preferences, economy-wide employer discrimination, and customer discrimination in jobs in contact with customers. The outcomes of the model allow us to build a test of ethnic discrimination in general and customer discrimination in particular. We run the test on French individual data in a cross-section of local labor markets (Employment Areas). Our results show that there is both ethnic and customer discrimination in the French labor market.