Revealing taste-based discrimination in hiring: a correspondence testing experiment with geographic variation

Abstract

The standard Correspondence Testing Experiment (CTE) does not identify whether employer prejudice, as opposed to statistical discrimination, drives discriminatory behaviour when hiring. This article proposes a new methodology using geographic variation to explore the link between employer attitudes towards ethnic minorities and the ethnic difference in callbacks for a job interview. Using already existing Swedish data we find that a randomly selected employer is more likely to discriminate against a minority job applicant in regions where the average employer has more negative attitudes.