Why Do Employers Sometimes Prefer Minority Candidates? Theoretical Review and Empirical Test

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Serval ID
serval:BIB_3AA42F22B3B4
Type
Report: a report published by a school or other institution, usually numbered within a series.
Publication sub-type
Working paper: Working papers contain results presented by the author. Working papers aim to stimulate discussions between scientists with interested parties, they can also be the basis to publish articles in specialized journals
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Title
Why Do Employers Sometimes Prefer Minority Candidates? Theoretical Review and Empirical Test
Author(s)
Zschirnt Eva, Bonoli Giuliano, Fossati Flavia
Institution details
Nccr-on the move
Issued date
01/10/2020
Volume
28
Genre
Nccr-on the move Working Paper Series
Language
english
Abstract
Correspondence tests on ethnic discrimination in the labor market usually focus on how often native majority candidates and ethnic minority candidates are invited for job interviews on an aggregated level. Cases in which only minority candidates are invited for an interview have mostly been disregarded as noise and not analyzed further. In this paper, we argue that employers who prefer minority over majority candidates may have good reasons to do so. We propose several theoretical mechanisms that explain why it would be desirable to hire individuals with a non-native background and test these expectations quantitatively with correspondence test data that was collected in Switzerland between October 2017 and December 2018. We find partial support for our expectations: in particular, in urban and thus likely more international firm settings; and among owners doing the recruitment themselves in the context of small enterprises, where close supervision is possible, we identified employers who are more willing to “take the risk” and to invite only minority applicants for a job interview. We argue that employer behavior is likely to be complex and that research should analyze instances of minority preferences more systematically.
Keywords
Discrimination, correspondence test, employer, jobseeker
Create date
16/10/2020 12:49
Last modification date
06/11/2023 8:10
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