推文人 | 邓卫广 

原文信息：Neumark, David. 2012. "Detecting Discrimination in Audit and Correspondence Studies." Journal of Human Resources, 47(4), 1128-57.

 

推文摘要

 

通过Audit Studies来检验歧视受到批评，因为不同组别的申请者在雇主看来具有不同的特质，这些研究者不可观测的特质使得我们无法有效识别歧视。通过构造和投递大量组间特征相同的虚构简历，Correspondence Studies试图解决这一问题。然而，Heckman and Siegelman (1993)指出如果生产率的不可观测的决定性因素的方差存在组间差异，那么在两个方向上都可能产生歧视的虚假证据。这篇论文展示在correspondence study中，如果影响雇佣的申请者的特征存在组间差异，我们如何获得歧视的无偏估计。

 

引言

 

歧视问题受到了广泛的关注，然而存在性的检验却备受争议。由于存在不可观测的遗漏变量等问题，如何证明和分离统计歧视和偏好歧视一直是经济学和统计学的重要课题。

 

论证过程

 

检验机制

 

检验结果

 

采用Heteroskedastic Probit 估计方法，作者检验他的理论。

 

 

提示

 

在进行歧视检验的研究中，关注不可观测的特征的组间差异是至关重要的，而该文提供了很好的检验解决方法。

 

推荐阅读文献

 

Heckman, James, and Peter Siegelman. 1993. “The Urban Institute Audit Studies: Their Methods and Findings.” In Clear and Convincing Evidence: Measurement of Discrimination in America, ed. Fix and Struyk, 187–258. Washington, D.C.: The Urban Institute Press.

 

Neumark, David. 2018. “Experimental Research on Labor Market Discrimination.” Journal of Economic Literature, Forthcoming.

 

推文作者简介：

 

邓卫广：湖南大学经济与贸易学院，中国大学生追踪调查（微信公众号：CCSLS001）。研究方向：行为经济学(Peer Effects)、婚姻家庭、人力资本、创业创新等。邮箱：dengweiguang@126.com。

 

Abstract

 

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 still can 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.