It is very difficult to measure a particular employer’s discrimination coefficient againstblacks or other minorities, or to determine if a particular employer is engaging in statisticaldiscrimination. After all, it is illegal to discriminate on the basis of race, gender, andnational origin, so employers will not willingly reveal their prejudicial behavior. A number of studies have attempted to bypass this measurement problem by conductinglabor market experiments. In these experiments, the researchers typically contact anumber of employers at random. The experiments are cleverly designed to induce employersto reveal their preferences about hiring women and minorities. For example, a studyshows that something as seemingly innocuous as a person’s name—and the inference thatmost people would make regarding that person’s race—can have a sizable impact on theemployment opportunities of a job applicant. 16 In this particular experiment, researchers sent out about 5,000 fake résumés in response toabout 1,300 job ads that actually appeared in Boston and Chicago newspapers. The résumédid not specify the applicant’s race. But the researchers gave employers a hint of the applicant’srace by giving the fake applicant a name that was either “white- sounding” or “blacksounding.”Among the white-sounding names were Emily Walsh and Greg Baker, whilethe black-sounding names included Lakisha Washington and Jamal Jones. 17 In addition, theresearchers varied the résumés slightly in terms of the applicant’s marketable skills. Somerésumés stated that the applicant had many years of experience, or that the applicant hadcompleted some type of certification degree, or that the applicant knew a foreign language. After mailing out the fake résumés, the researchers sat back and waited for employersto call back the fake applicants for interviews. Remarkably, holding the skills in the applicant’srésumé constant, the applicants with white-sounding names got about one callbackfor every 10 résumés sent. In contrast, the applicants with black-sounding names got onlyone callback for every 15 résumés sent. A black applicant would need eight more years ofwork experience to even out the gap! The experimental approach has been extended beyond the simple act of mailing outfake résumés. Some researchers have actually sent out “experimental” human beings inactual job interviews to see how employers would react to the characteristics of theseapplicants. In these “hiring audits,” two matched job applicants are similar in all respects,except that they differ in their race or gender. The hiring audit is conducted at a number
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