Excerpts from “Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination”

Abstract

In this chapter, the authors conduct a field experiment that builds on the correspondence testing methodology that has been primarily used in the past to study minority outcomes in the United Kingdom. The experiment was carried out between July 2001 and January 2002 in Boston and between July 2001 and May 2002 in Chicago. The authors randomly assign very White-sounding names (such as Emily Walsh or Greg Baker) to half the resumes and very African-American-sounding names (such as Lakisha Washington or Jamal Jones) to the other half. Every measure of economic success reveals significant racial inequality in the US labor market. Statistical discrimination models are the prominent alternative to the taste-based models in the economics literature. However, employer discrimination models would struggle to explain why African-Americans get relatively lower returns to their credentials. Economic theories of discrimination can be classified into two main categories: taste-based and statistical discrimination models.