TY  - JOUR
AU  - Bertrand,Marianne
AU  - Mullainathan,Sendhil
TI  - Are Emily and Greg More Employable than Lakisha and Jamal? A Field Experiment on Labor Market Discrimination
JF  - National Bureau of Economic Research Working Paper Series
VL  - No. 9873
PY  - 2003
Y2  - July 2003
UR  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873
L1  - http://www.nber.org/papers/w9873.pdf
N1  - Author contact info:
Marianne Bertrand
Booth School of Business
University of Chicago
5807 South Woodlawn Avenue
Chicago, IL  60637
Tel: 773/834-5943
Fax: 773/702-0458
E-Mail: marianne.bertrand@chicagobooth.edu

Sendhil Mullainathan
Department of Economics
Littauer M-18
Harvard University
Cambridge, MA  02138
Tel: 617/496-2720
Fax: 617/495-7730
E-Mail: mullain@fas.harvard.edu
AB  - We perform a field experiment to measure racial discrimination in the labor market.  We respond with fictitious resumes to help-wanted ads in Boston and Chicago newspapers.  To manipulate perception of race, each resume is assigned either a very African American sounding name or a very White sounding name.  The results show significant discrimination against African-American names: White names receive 50 percent more callbacks for interviews.  We also find that race affects the benefits of a better resume.  For White names, a higher quality resume elicits 30 percent more callbacks whereas for African Americans, it elicits a far smaller increase.  Applicants living in better neighborhoods receive more callbacks but, interestingly, this effect does not differ by race.  The amount of discrimination is uniform across occupations and industries.  Federal contractors and employers who list  Equal Opportunity Employer' in their ad discriminate as much as other employers.  We find little evidence that our results are driven by employers inferring something other than race, such as social class, from the names.  These results suggest that racial discrimination is still a prominent feature of the labor market.
ER  -