Evidence of Ethnic Discrimination in the Swedish Labor Market Using Experimental Data

By Mikael Carlsson, Dan-Olof Rooth. Social Science Research Network, 2007

672 citations recorded by the source corpus.

We present experimental evidence for recruitment discrimination against men with an Arabic sounding name. Our results show that every fourth employer discriminates against the minority. However, simulations indicate that ethnic discrimination is only responsible for less than one sixth of the native-immigrant unemployment gap. We extend previous analyses using this method by interviewing employers. We find that discriminatory employers have, to a greater extent, a male responsible for recruitment and a share of male employees greater than 35 percent. Firms that have an ethnic multitude plan were not found to discriminate less than other firms.

Subfields: Gender Studies, Language and Linguistics, Sociology and Political Science

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/b3612a588f9509992cc68ae536377568c29686bf

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Citations in the corpus

Sexual orientation discrimination in the labour market (2009, background): “In correspondence testing (see Neumark et al., 1996; Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007), all applicants must be matched in all characteristics other than sexual orientation.”
Racial Discrimination in the Sharing Economy: Evidence from a Field Experiment (2017, background): “For example, in mailing out resumes, a researcher does not know the identity of the specific person evaluating candidates, absent some follow-up communication (Carlsson & Rooth 2007).”
Race and Marriage in the Labor Market: A Discrimination Correspondence Study in a Developing Country (2014, background): “in the labor market (Bursell, 2007; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007; Rooth, 2010) and in the housing market (Ahmed and Hammarstedt, 2008).”
A multidisciplinary survey on discrimination analysis (2013, methodology): “In addition to recording the outcome of job applications, Carlsson and Rooth (2007) also conduct interviews with employers who invited at least one applicant, in order to gather information on the gender and ethnicity of the recruiter and on the characteristics of the employer’s company, with the in”
Same Work, Lower Grade? Student Ethnicity and Teachers’ Subjective Assessments (2011, background): “Similar direct effects of ethnicity on outcomes have been described extensively in labor market studies (cf. Bertrand & Mullainathan, 2004 and Carlsson & Roothe, 2007), where simply changing the name on a resume alters the chances of being invited for a job interview.”
ETHNIC DIVERSITY, PUBLIC SPENDING, AND INDIVIDUAL SUPPORT FOR THE WELFARE STATE: A REVIEW OF THE EMPIRICAL LITERATURE (2013, neutral): “…last few years, mainly in trust, ultimatum, and dictator games.13 In addition, there have been a number of interesting field experiments that study ethnic or racial discrimination on the labor market based on fictitious job applications (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007).”
Ethnic Discrimination in Germany’s Labour Market: A Field Experiment (2012, background): “It is conceivable that net discrimination is substantially larger for candidates with mediocre grades; for such applications negative stereotypes of human resource managers (such as ‘students with Turkish migration background are underperforming’) become potentially more important.”
Understanding the ethnic pay gap in Britain (2012, background): “Discrimination is perhaps ultimately against people who look and sound different or who appear to behave differently from the ‘host community’ (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007; Fryer and Levitt, 2004).”
Measuring discrimination facing ethnic minority job applicants: an Irish experiment (2011, background): “The findings on variations in discrimination across the labour market are far less consistent, in terms of skill levels, firm size or neighbourhood effects (Bertrand and Mullainathan, 2004; Carlsson and Rooth, 2007).”
The Reverse Gender Gap in Ethnic Discrimination: Employer Stereotypes of Men and Women with Arabic Names1,2 (2016, background): “…in Sweden indicating that employers have stereotypes related to unobservable productivity characteristics that are unfavorable for both female and male job applicants with Arabic names, and/or they tend to discriminate against persons of Arabic background (Carlsson and Rooth 2007; Bursell 2014).”
Hiring Discrimination: An Overview of (Almost) All Correspondence Experiments Since 2005 (2017, neutral): “Middle-Eastern (versus native) name Sweden Carlsson (2010), Carlsson & Eriksson (in press), Carlsson & Rooth (2007), and Carlsson & Rooth (2012) - Attström (2007) - A.17.”
Detecting Discrimination against Homosexuals: Evidence from a Field Experiment on the Internet (2009, background): “…substantially lower than what has been observed for ethnicity on the Swedish housing market (Ahmed and Hammarstedt 2008), and also lower than what has been observed for ethnicity in the labour market in Sweden as well as in other countries (Carlsson and Rooth 2007; Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004).”