Detecting discrimination in audit and correspondence studies
By: David Neumark
Contributors: National Bureau of Economic Research
Series: NBER working paper series -- working paper 16448
Publisher: National Bureau of Economic Research
Published: 2010
Place of publication: Cambridge, MA
Language: eng
Format: Electronic resource
Description: "Audit studies testing for discrimination have been criticized because applicants from different groups may not appear identical to employers.  Correspondence studies address this criticism by using fictitious paper applicants whose qualifications can be made identical across groups.  However, Heckman and Siegelman (1993) show that group differences in the variance of unobservable determinants of productivity can still generate spurious evidence of discrimination in either direction.  This paper shows how to recover an unbiased estimate of discrimination when the correspondence study includes variation in applicant characteristics that affect hiring.  The method is applied to actual data and assessed using Monte Carlo methods"--National Bureau of Economic Research web site.
Notes: Title from PDF file as viewed on 2/22/2011.

Includes bibliographical references.

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