Correspondence studies can identify the extent of discrimination in hiring as typically defined by the law, which includes discrimination against ethnic minorities and females. However, as Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show, if employers act upon a group difference in the variance of unobserved...

Several studies using observational data suggest that ethnic discrimination increases in downturns of the economy. We investigate whether ethnic discrimination depends on labor market tightness using data from correspondence studies. We utilize three correspondence studies of the Swedish labor...

This paper investigates the consequences of skill loss as a result of unemployment in an efficiency wage model with turnover costs and on-the-job search. Firms are unable to differentiate wages and therefore prefer to hire employed searchers or unemployed workers who have not lost human capital....

This paper considers the optimal hiring strategy of a firm that is unable to observe the productive abilities of all its applicants. Whom the firm considers as hireable, will depend crucially on the extent to which the firm can use its wage setting to mirror productivity differences. However,...

The standard correspondence testing experiment does not identify whether employer prejudice drives discriminatory behavior when hiring. This article proposes a new methodology using geographic variation to explore the link between employer attitudes toward ethnic minorities and the ethnic...