overreaction and underreaction in analysts forecasts abstract we examine hypotheses derived from behavioral decision theory regarding conditions that lead to overreaction and conditions that lead to underreaction in analysts earnings forecasts we argue that three heuristics jointly influence earnings forecasts leniency representativeness and anchoring and adjustment we present a model for the concurrent influence of these heuristics on forecast errors and examine three predictions of this model 1 that there is a tendency towards overreaction in forecast changes and underreaction in forecast revisions 2 that there is overreaction to positive forecast modifications and underreaction to negative forecast modifications and 3 that these biases increase with the forecast horizon

racial disparities in job finding and offered wages abstractthe extent to which discrimination can explain racial wage gaps is one of the most divisive issues in the social sciences using a newly available data set this paper develops a simple empirical test that under plausible but not innocuous conditions provides a lower bound on the extent of discrimination in the labor market taken at face value our estimates imply that differential treatment accounts for at least one third of the black white wage gap we argue that the patterns in our data are most naturally rationalized through a search matching model in which employers statistically discriminate on the basis of race when hiring unemployed workers but learn about their marginal product over time

disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction in australia we examine the relationship between disability job mismatch earnings and job satisfaction using panel estimation on data from the household income and labour dynamics in australia hilda survey 2001 08 while we do not find any relationship between work limiting disability and overskilling it appears that there is a positive relationship between work limiting disability and overeducation which is consistent with disability onset leading to downward occupational movement at least in relative terms we find a negative correlation between work limiting disability and both earnings and job satisfaction however there is only evidence of a causal relationship in terms of the latter where the impact of disability is found to be multifaceted

race and gender discrimination in bargaining for a new car more than three hundred paired audits at new car dealerships reveal that dealers quoted significantly lower prices to white males than to black or female test buyers using identical scripted bargaining strategies ancillary evidence suggests that the dealerships disparate treatment of women and blacks may be caused by dealers statistical inferences about consumers reservation prices but the data do not strongly support any single theory of discrimination copyright 1995 by american economic association

racial and ethnic economic inequality the international record international racial and ethnic economic inequality is examined the international record shows disparity across nations and regions between racial and ethnic groups within countries and within groups in the same country subalternate racial and ethnic populations whether in the majority or minority suffer remarkably similar economic outcomes across the globe institutional racism and cultural discrimination affect subcultures and different classes in multiple ways in every country those who get the short stick continue to face poor prospects for economic inclusion and justice

an analysis of the correlates of discrimination facing young hispanic job seekers this study examines the extent and correlates of discrimination faced by young accented hispanic males in chicago and san diego using the outcomes of job applications by matched pairs of anglo and hispanic job seekers this is one of the first examples of audits being used in the labormarket area the audit methodology provides a powerful basis for examining discriminatory hiring practices because it permits direct comparison of hiring outcomes for pairs of anglo and hispanic jobseekers with similar labor market qualifications in this paper we first present differences in anglo hispanic success rates in filing applications obtaining interviews and obtaining jobs this builds on the descriptive analysis presented in harry cross et al 1990 we then focus on the correlates of differential success in obtaining interviews and in subsequent job acquisition i the audit methodology

analyst forecasting errors and their implications for security analysis a comparison of 66 100 consensus estimates of wall street analysts with reported earnings for a large sample of nyse amex and otc companies demonstrates that their forecasts differ significantly from actual reported earnings a minority of estimates fall within a range around reported earnings considered acceptable to many professional investors the error rates are not meaningfully affected by the business cycle or industry groupings the average error also appears to be increasing over time these findings question the use of finely calibrated earnings forecasts that are integral to the most common valuation models and indirectly question the valuation methods themselves

a decomposition method on employment and wage discrimination and its application in urban china 2002 2013 abstract labor market discrimination is an important issue in developing countries where path dependent institutions have been dominant while effective institutional arrangements and policies have been hidden by local customs and culture however the existing applications of classical blinder oaxaca decomposition face criticism for their imprecise understanding of the factors affecting institutional discrimination in labor markets as well as for their lack of power in formulating well targeted anti discrimination policies following oaxaca 1973 we propose a new method to decompose the total discrimination index tdi to analyze employment and wage discrimination in the labor markets of developing countries the tdi is decomposed into the employment discrimination index edi and the wage discrimination index wdi then into the underpayment index to majorities upi and the overpayment index to minorities opi we apply this method to the institutional discrimination against rural migrants in china s urban areas using national representative data from 2002 to 2013 we have found that 1 the tdi increased quickly after china entered the wto then dropped after anti discrimination policies were implemented 2 the tdi is mainly determined by the upi while the tdi s fluctuation is mainly determined by the wdi our method provides insights into the changing composition of employment and wage discrimination and their respective labor market outcomes in developing countries as a result appropriate policy measures may be developed accordingly

forecasting efficiency concepts and applications this article introduces the concept of forecast efficiency in which the forecast contains all information available at the time of the forecast empirical tests investigate weak efficiency where the information set is all past forecasts and where all forecast revisions and errors should be uncorrelated with past forecast revisions tests of macroeconomic energy consumption and oil price forecasts find a significant autocorrelation of forecast revisions with fifty of fifty one tests showing positive correlation of forecast revisions as opposed to zero correlation consistent with forecast efficiency copyright 1987 by mit press

the cost of empowerment multiple sources of women s debt in rural india abstractpoor women borrow from multiple sources this study examines whether the source of debt matters for women s role in household financial decisions drawing on a household survey from rural tamil nadu we categorise women s loans along the lines of accessibility and formality into planned loans and instant loans we find that instant loans support women s bargaining power in various types of household financial decisions whereas planned loans have no impact this surprising result is better understood when the nature of instant loans is examined these are frequently usurious involve coercive enforcement methods and are considered socially debasing hence women who use them perform a convenient role for their households and in return gain some negotiating power

credit constraints credit unions and small scale producers in guatemala abstract efficient and equitable development outcomes may depend in part on whether formal financial institutions leave low wealth producers tightly constrained in their access to credit if so can cooperative institutions efficiently relax these constraints these issues are explored using survey data gathered from 950 small scale producer households in areas of guatemala with market oriented credit unions that mobilize savings and make unsubsidized loans nonprice rationing by banks is found to be common among lower wealth households while credit unions relax credit constraints for a significant portion of those rationed by banks but not the poorest of the study households

an analysis of offer functions of banks and credit unions in guatemala economists have sought to identify institutions which might fill the gap in household access to credit arising from rationing by formal lenders credit unions have been identified as institutions which might use informational and monitoring advantages to fill that gap using information on household perceptions of their access to credit this article analyses the impact of certain credit unions on the access to credit of households in guatemala regression results indicate that credit unions serve markets unserved by formal lenders and that information on household perceptions of their access to credit is important in making inferences about lender lending activities

clientelization and fragmentation in backward agriculture forward induction and entry deterrence abstract this paper considers a case of fragmented duopoly basu and bell 1991 where firms have a captive segment each and compete in the remaining contested segment in a standard cournot fashion we study a two stage game in the first period the existing firm chooses the size of the captive segment incurring some cost of course and then both the firms choose quantities to sell in the second stage given a small fixed cost relevant to the contested segment the second stage game has three possible equilibria two corner and the interior one these induce a proliferation of subgame perfect nash equilibria in the whole game we use a version of forward induction rationality to refine this set we find the unique equilibrium where the existing firm has monopoly over the entire market some applications and extensions are suggested

can t buy me love a field experiment exploring the trade off between income and caste status in an indian matrimonial market i introduction the relationship between economic motive and observance of discriminatory social customs is hardly new to economists this is implicit in the writings of becker 1957 1973 1974 on discrimination and other social customs and explicit in arrow s essay 1972 on discrimination and akerlof s work 1980 on the interactive relationship between economic incentives and discriminatory social customs as scholars like becker arrow and akerlof have investigated the relationship between economic incentives and the prevalence of custom based discrimination of which status based discrimination is an example it is natural to consult the related empirical evidence on the impact of economic incentives on the extent of status based discrimination surprisingly the extant empirical literature is mostly silent on how economic incentives may directly interact with status based discrimination 1 this is atypical as one would be hard pressed to find an issue as weighty as status based discrimination yet our knowledge in this aspect remains oddly limited our study aspires to rectify this gap this study investigates whether and what magnitude of economic incentive can diminish the incidence of status based discrimination by designing a controlled field experiment in an actual marketplace a reputable arranged marriage market that is conducted via newspaper advertisements the existing literature suggests that this market might be especially prone to strong discriminatory mate selection behavior based on the social identity status of an individual where caste identity of an individual is an easily measured indicator of social status the genesis of this discrimination can be attributed to a high status female s concern for a decline in her social status if she engages in a marital relationship with a low status male against this backdrop we ask whether a low status male could attempt to weaken this enduring form of discrimination by providing systematic economic incentive in the form of high monthly groom incomes to a high status female so that the former s marriage proposal receives preliminary consideration by the latter conditional on both individuals participation in this market the marketplace that we utilize is a well functioning arranged marriage market conducted via matrimonial advertisements in a widely circulated bengali language newspaper marriageable males in this market typically advertise their caste and income information among other attributes after these advertisements appear in the newspaper interested families contact the advertiser mostly in form of detailed letters expressing their interest in that advertisement this provides a confidential and reliable measure of first intent of the interested party in this case females therefore the conjunction of an exceptionally strong status based mate selection behavior a reputed market for arranged marriages and an exclusive correspondence process furnish us with a unique opportunity to investigate the main research hypothesis of our study to the best of our knowledge this is the first field experiment that exclusively focuses on how economic incentives can influence status based discrimination in an actual market 2 to operationalize the experiment we create nine unique matrimonial advertisements each representing a fictitious groom type 3 these potential grooms belong to one of the three blocks where each block contains three grooms from a given caste group we vary the caste status across these blocks we consider three different caste groups high middle and low strictly ranked so in the study region we vary the income features of grooms within a block we consider three different monthly income levels i e high medium and low that are considered feasible for each caste group in the study region furthermore we randomly assign other characteristics relevant for this market to all the potential grooms so that these features on average do not affect the behavior of responders

pre harvest price expectations for corn the information content of usda reports and new crop futures this article examines the puzzle of why futures prices continue to react to usda crop reports despite the fact that reports appear to be no longer newsworthy that is provide no better production estimates than private forecasts the information value of reports is measured in terms of their influence on rational agents harvest time corn price expectations which are uncovered using a hamilton type modeling approach results show that reports are still newsworthy as they would contribute to agents price expectations if released a day early thus futures price reactions which closely reflect price expectations are rational and consistent with efficient markets hypothesis copyright 2008 oxford university press

race and employment outcomes evidence from nba coaches we study the impact of management diversity on employment outcomes using data on nba head coaches that includes information on the race of each coach and his supervisor we find that a supervisor is more likely to hire a coach of his own race we also find that black coaches are less likely to be rehired to a second job within three years than their white counterparts and that a head coach s race affects the quality of the opportunities he is offered these findings are stronger for first time coaches than experienced coaches suggesting that observable information on performance mitigates bias jel j0 j4 j7

the impact of connectivity on market interlinkages evidence from rural punjab up to the 1980s it was generally accepted that many key issues in agrarian development could not be studied without an understanding of market interlinkages recently however this theory has lost its importance in development literature based on a household level survey from rural pakistan this paper seeks to re introduce the importance of interlinkages by illustrating their exploitative potential particularly in unequal isolated villages where landlords are essentially monopolist monopsonist the solution proposed is to break isolation making use of an exogenous shock found in the construction of a motorway the study finds that while connectivity does not break interlinkages completely it does significantly reduce their exploitative nature

announcement effects and the theory of storage an empirical study of lumber futures we investigate how lumber futures returns are affected by monthly housing starts announcements and analyze the dependence of the response on lumber inventories and time to delivery to do so we develop a generalized least squares gls method to jointly analyze simultaneously traded contracts we find that increases in the unanticipated component of housing starts announcements increase returns on lumber futures contracts further and as predicted by the theory of storage but previously unrecorded the effects of housing starts shocks decline with lumber inventories there is also a time to delivery effect near delivery contracts respond more sharply to housing starts news than do farther out contracts

interest rates collateral and de interlinkage a micro study of rural credit in west bengal this study based on a primary field survey in rural west bengal analyses the terms and conditions of the differentiated structure of rural credit with the advent of capitalist agriculture within the interventionist state the sample households are classified according to the economic classes of patnaik as well as the standard acreage criterion the possibility of interlinkage between credit and all other structures is remote the average rate of interest is inversely related to ascending class status there is a systematic association between rate of interest and the value of collateral on the one hand and marketability of collateral and interest rates on the other

do field experiments on labor and housing markets overstate discrimination a re examination of the evidence since 2000 more than 80 field experiments across 23 countries consider the traditional dimensions of discrimination in labor and housing markets such as discrimination based on race these studies

a controlled field experiment on corruption abstract this paper reports on a controlled field experiment on corruption designed to address two important issues the experimenter s scrutiny and the unobservability of corruption in the experiment a grader is offered a bribe along with a demand for a better grade we find that graders respond more favorably to bigger bribes while the effect of higher wages is ambiguous it lowers the bribe s acceptance but it fosters reciprocation monitoring and punishment can deter corruption but we cannot reject that it may also crowd out intrinsic motivations for honesty when intensified finally our results suggest several micro determinants of corruption including age ability religiosity but not gender

segmentation collateral undervaluation and the rate of interest in agrarian credit markets some evidence from two villages in south india this paper examines certain issues pertaining to the structure of agrarian credit markets in developing countries using empirical evidence on credit transactions from two villages in south india first the bases for the segmentation between formal and informal sectors of the credit market are identified as being 1 the type of collateral offered on credit contracts and 2 the purpose for which credit is taken secondly the paper shows the occurrence of a systematic association between rates of interest and types of collateral the evidence supports the hypothesis that lower marketability of collateral security and hence higher undervaluation increases the rate of interest charged on a loan thirdly the evidence shows an inverse relationship between the value of land owned by a borrower and the rate of interest on a credit contract copyright 1991 by oxford university press

the determinants of moneylender interest rates evidence from rural india this study examines the determinants of moneylender interest rates in rural india in the context of two major developments of the 1960s a the incidence of agricultural technical change in the process popularly denoted by the term green revolution and b the spread of government sponsored subsidised credit through rural banks and co operative credit agencies it finds that farmers residing in areas characterised by the use of green revolution technology face lower moneylender interest rates it also finds evidence of the reduction of moneylender monopoly power as a result of increased competition from formal lending agencies it concludes that informal rural credit markets are sensitive mechanisms which respond to environmental as well as borrower characteristics

are harvest forecasts news usda announcements and futures market reactions futures market price data for maize and soyabeans are used to examine reactions to us department of agriculture harvest forecasts these forecasts are widely known and reasonably accurate so failure to find significant reaction would indicate that the usda did not contribute additional news relative to information already possessed by traders various t tests f tests and nonparametric chi square tests indicate rejection of the null hypothesis of no significant difference between means of absolute values or variances of changes in closing prices on days following a usda announcement and other days thus the data indicate that significant information is contained in the forecasts

orchestrating impartiality the impact of blind auditions on female musicians a change in the audition procedures of symphony orchestras adoption of blind auditions with a screen to conceal the candidate s identity from the jury provides a test for sex biased hiring using data from actual auditions in an individual fixed effects framework we find that the screen increases the probability a woman will be advanced and hired although some of our estimates have large standard errors and there is one persistent effect in the opposite direction the weight of the evidence suggests that the blind audition procedure fostered impartiality in hiring and increased the proportion women in symphony orchestras

field experiments of discrimination in the market place controlled experiments using matched pairs of bogus transactors to test for discrimination in the marketplace have been conducted for over 30 years and have extended across 10 countries significant persistent and pervasive levels of discrimination have been found against non whites and women in labour housing and product markets rates of employment discrimination against non whites in excess of 25 have been measured in australia europe and north america a small number of experiments have also investigated employment discrimination against the disabled in britain and the netherlands and against older applicants in the united states

evidence on discrimination in employment codes of color codes of gender there is substantial racial and gender disparity in the american economy as we will demonstrate discriminatory treatment within the labor market is a major cause of this inequality the evidence is ubiquitous careful research studies that estimate wage and employment regressions help wanted advertisements audit and correspondence studies and discrimination suits that are often reported by the news media yet there appear to have been periods of substantial reductions in economic disparity and discrimination for example donohue and heckman provide evidence that racial discrimination declined during 1965 1975 1 gottschalk has produced statistical estimates that indicate that discrimination against black males dropped most sharply between 1965 and 1975 and that discrimination against women declined during the interval 1973 1994 2 but some unanswered questions remain why did the movement toward racial equality stagnate and eventually decline after the mid 1970s what factors are most responsible for the remaining gender inequality what is the role of the competitive process in the elimination or reproduction of discrimination in employment

how market efficiency and the theory of storage link corn and ethanol markets this article uses the theories of market efficiency and supply of storage to develop a conceptual link between the corn and ethanol markets and explores statistical evidence for the link we propose that a long run no profit condition is established in distant futures markets for ethanol corn and natural gas and then use the theory of storage to define an inter temporal equilibrium among these prices the relationship shows that under certain conditions future price expectations will influence nearby futures prices and that a short term relationship between input and output prices will exist we demonstrate validity of the theory using a structural price model and then by means of time series techniques

when do the usda forecasters make mistakes this study analysed forecasts for all us corn soya bean and wheat categories published within the world agricultural supply and demand estimates wasde reports over the 1987 88 through 2009 10 marketing years in an attempt to identify patterns and better understand when the usda forecasters make mistakes two general sources of errors were investigated behavioural and macroeconomic factors the first objective was to examine how these factors affect the size of the forecast error and the second concentrated on the direction of the error due to these effects our findings suggest that the largest increase in the size of usda forecast errors was associated with structural changes in commodity markets that took place in the mid 2000s corn soya bean and wheat forecast errors also grew during the periods of economic growth and with changes in exchange rates while inflation and changes in oil price had a much smaller impact with respect to behavioural sources we identified patterns consistent with leni

sex discrimination in restaurant hiring an audit study in an audit study of sex discrimination in hiring comparably matched pairs of men and women applied for jobs as waiters and waitresses at restaurants in philadelphia in high price restaurants where earnings are higher job applications from women had an estimated probability of receiving a job offer that was lower by about 0 4 and an estimated probability of receiving an interview that was lower by about 0 35 both estimated differentials are statistically significant additional evidence suggests that customer discrimination partly underlies the hiring discrimination

do employer preferences contribute to sticky floors the authors investigate the importance of employer preferences in explaining sticky floors the pattern in which women are less likely as compared to men to start to climb the job ladder the authors perform a randomized field experiment in the belgian labor market and test whether hiring discrimination based on gender is heterogeneous by whether jobs imply a promotion compared to the applicants current position the findings show that women receive 33 fewer interview invitations when they apply for jobs that imply a first promotion at the functional level by contrast the results show that their hiring chances are not significantly affected by the authority level of the job

economic returns to social power merchants finance and interlinkage in the grain markets of bangladesh abstract the paper describes contrasting forms of interlinked transaction and the exchange regimes in which they are situated in two rural areas of bangladesh a fast growing green revolution area and a slow growing backward area some interlinkages fix output and finance prices for producers others establish personalized monopsony in trade the implication for rates of return and vulnerability of the different forms of interlinked transaction are explored perverse risk transfer from less to more vulnerable parties is found particularly when interlinkages are combined the market structures described appear to emerge not from government intervention but from the uneven distribution of local power and are thus unlikely to be improved by structural adjustment reforms or by price focused policies

male female wage differentials and policy responses without implicating them for any of the contents of the paper i am grateful to the following for helpful discussions or comments andrea beller university of illinois david bloom harvard and columnbia glen cain university of wisconsin ron ehrenberg cornell victor fuchs stanford bob gregory australian national university jonathan leonard university of california berkeley roberta robb brock university and paul weiler harvard financial support of the humanities and social sciences committee of the research board of the universitu of toronto is eratefullu acknowlede ed

modelling soybean prices in a changing policy environment accurate forecasts of commodity prices are an important ingredient in the policy formation process a commodity price forecasting procedure used routinely by the us department of agriculture in their policy and market analysis activities is a simple linear reduced form regression model that predicts season average farm prices safp using policy variables and the ratio of total ending stocks to use this approach is extended to the soybean safp to estimate a benchmark model using annual data also several specification issues related to this estimation framework are addressed evaluation suggests that the standard forecasting procedure may be affected by the fact that the ratio of stocks to use is endogenous to prices in addition important structural changes are revealed in these relationships over time a model is then considered that allows parameters to shift gradually improvements in the accuracy of model forecasts allowed by this parameter switching technique are identified and discussed in add

forecast performance of wasde price projections for u s corn we conduct a comprehensive evaluation of the season average price projections for u s corn as published by the u s department of agriculture s world agricultural supply and demand estimates wasde an important issue given reduced resources and increased program scrutiny within the federal government this study is the first in the literature to evaluate the wasde corn projections relative to futures adjusted forecasts throughout the forecasting cycle using a lengthy evaluation period 1980 81 2012 13 we find that wasde projections provide lower rmses relative to futures adjusted forecasts for 9 of the 16 forecast periods 4 of which are statistically different encompassing tests show that wasde projections often provide incremental information not present in the futures adjusted forecasts composite forecasts based on futures adjusted forecasts and wasde projections reduced the rmses over all forecast periods by an average 12 16 favorable average trading profits may be generated for some forecast months using wasde projections overall our results suggest that wasde projections of the u s corn season average price provide useful information to the market and could enhance the efficiency of the agricultural sector

evaluating the joint efficiency of german trade forecasts a nonparametric multivariate approach i analyse the joint efficiency of export and import forecasts by leading economic research institutes for the years 1970 to 2017 for germany in a multivariate setting to this end i compute in a

is there less discrimination in occupations where recruitment is difficult the authors empirically test the cross sectional relationship between hiring discrimination and labor market tightness at the level of the occupation to this end they conduct a correspondence tes

ethnic discrimination in hiring labour market tightness and the business cycle evidence from field experiments several studies using observational data suggest that ethnic discrimination increases in downturns of the economy we investigate whether ethnic discrimination depends on labour market tightness us

the fiscal myth of the price level i examine the fiscal theory of the price level according to which non ricardian policy and predetermined nominal government debt fiscally determine prices i argue that the non ricardian policy

evaluation of usda interval forecasts of corn and soybean prices usda world agricultural supply and demand estimates wasde price forecasts are published as an interval but are typically analyzed as point estimates thus all information about uncertainty imbedded in the forecast is ignored the purpose of this article is to evaluate the accuracy of wasde corn and soybean price forecasts using methodology suitable for testing judgmental interval forecasts accuracy tests suggest that wasde forecasts are not calibrated at the 95 confidence level for both commodities and generally not calibrated for corn but calibrated for soybeans at the implied confidence level elicited from the survey of forecast providers

evidence on discrimination in consumer markets economists have contributed to the measurement of racial and ethnic discrimination in consumption and to the identification of its causes especially in housing markets and car sales to test the hypothesis that discrimination exists economists have turned to regression analysis and to audits a matched pair survey technique economists also have developed audit based measures of the incidence and severity of discrimination audit studies find continuing high levels of discrimination against minorities in the marketing of available housing and in car prices audit studies also find that discrimination can be caused both by economic agents prejudice and by their search for profits

are revisions to usda crop production forecasts smoothed this article uses nordhaus framework to determine the efficiency of the revision process for usda corn and soybean production forecasts over the 1970 1971 through 2004 2005 marketing years positive autocorrelation and consistency of directional changes in forecast revisions suggest these forecasts are smoothed evidence is provided that the loss in forecast accuracy due to smoothing is statistically and economically significant in several cases a conservative bias in farm operators assessments of yield potential and in the procedure for translating enumerator s information about plant fruit counts into objective yield estimates are identified as plausible sources of smoothing

the rationality of usda forecasts under multivariate asymmetric loss a large number of previous studies suggest that many usda forecasts are biased and or inefficient these findings however may be the result of the assumed loss function of usda forecasters we test the rationality of the usda net cash income forecasts and the wasde production and price forecasts between 1988 and 2018 using a flexible multivariate loss function that allows for asymmetric loss and non separable forecast errors our results provide robust evidence that usda forecasters are rational expected loss minimizers yet demonstrate a tendency to place a greater weight on under or overprediction as a result this study provides an alternate interpretation of previous findings of forecast irrationality

testing the rationality of japanese gdp forecasts the sign of forecast revision matters abstract this paper analyzes the rationality of japanese gdp forecasts of individual economists it finds that japanese forecasters are pessimistic optimistic when their forecast revisions frs are positive negative and that they always over react to new information across forecasters the magnitude of average fr is not correlated with the magnitude of average forecast errors fe these results together are consistent with neither the rational expectations hypothesis nor reputation models with rational and strategic forecasters

an empirical study of age discrimination in norway and germany using a questionnaire and a sample of students and personnel managers we establish the existence of age discrimination in the hiring process in germany and norway as expected age discrimination is more prominent in germany where the hiring probability of equally qualified applicants is reduced by about 22 percentage points due to an age differential of 14 years as opposed to only 12 percentage points in norway within both countries the tendency to discriminate does not differ between students and personnel managers and does not depend on the age of the decision maker the phenomenon of unemployment among older workers is characterized less by the risk of becoming unemployed than by the problem of remaining unemployed and failing to find new work frerichs and naegele 1998 p 59

the effects of unemployment and underemployment on employment opportunities results from a correspondence audit of the labor market for college graduates the authors use data from a resume audit to estimate the impact of unemployment and underemployment on the employment prospects of recent college graduates they find no statistical evidence linking unemployment spells of different durations to employment opportunities by contrast college graduates who are underemployed have callback rates that are 30 lower than those of applicants who are adequately employed the null effects associated with unemployment and the adverse effects associated with underemployment are robust across cities with relatively tight and loose labor market conditions internship experience obtained while completing one s degree substantially reduces the negative effects of underemployment the data support the proposition that employers view underemployment as a strong signal of lower expected productivity

debt in rural south india fragmentation social regulation and discrimination this micro level study combines multivariate and qualitative analyses to highlight the fragmented nature of debt in southern indian rural households it finds that debt is socially regulated in the sense that social interactions shape the cost use and access to debt caste social class and location affect how individuals borrow varying amounts from distinct money providers for varied purposes and at differing costs debt thus is not purely an economic but first and foremost a social transaction which inscribes debtors and creditors into local systems of hierarchies furthermore we find that debt is an illustration and catalyst of broader socio economic and political trends namely a lack of social protection persistent under employment and rising consumerism in terms of policy implications the study highlights the ambiguities and illusions inherent to financial inclusion policies aiming to eradicate informal debt

testing for racial discrimination in the labour market racial discrimination in selection for job interview was measured directly by the experimental technique of corresponding testing carefully matched pairs of written job applications were sent in response to advertised vacancies in victoria a state of australia one letter was from an applicant with an anglo celtic name and the other was from an applicant with a greek or vietnamese name statistically significant discrimination was found against both vietnamese named and greek named applicants there was no relationship between the incidence of discrimination and the competitive structure of the employer s product market copyright 1991 by oxford university press

measuring racial discrimination with fair housing audits caught in the act a survey technique called a fair housing audit provides a direct measure of racial discrimination in housing this paper examines the econometric issues raised by audit data measures the discrimination uncovered by a 1981 boston study and tests hypotheses about the causes of discrimination the estimated level of discrimination is high black housing seekers are told about 30 percent fewer available housing units than are whites the hypothesis tests indicate that the primary cause of this discrimination is that housing agents illegally promote their economic interests by catering to the racial prejudice of their current or potential white customers