Adaptive Correspondence Experiments
AEA Papers and Proceedings
vol. 111,
May 2021
(pp. 43-48)
Abstract
Correspondence experiments probe for discrimination by manipulating employer perceptions of applicant characteristics. We consider the gains from dynamically adapting the number and quality of fictitious applications each employer receives to their prior callback decisions. Calibrating employer behavior to experimental data from Nunley et al. (2015), we find that it is possible to cut the number of applications required to detect a fixed number of discriminators roughly in half relative to a benchmark design with a fixed number of applications per job. These gains are achieved primarily from abandoning jobs with very low callback probabilities and those that call back Black applicants.Citation
Avivi, Hadar, Patrick Kline, Evan Rose, and Christopher Walters. 2021. "Adaptive Correspondence Experiments." AEA Papers and Proceedings, 111: 43-48. DOI: 10.1257/pandp.20211079Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- M51 Personnel Economics: Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions
- J23 Labor Demand
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
- J71 Labor Discrimination
- J41 Labor Contracts