Title: When Do Chinese Firms Advertising on Internet Job Boards Discriminate in Their Hiring Practices?

Speaker: Margaret Maurer-Fazio

Abstract: In this seminar, I will report results from three large‐scale field experiments that investigate how real Chinese firms respond to job applications received from fictitious applicants whose resume characteristics are purposefully crafted to vary only in terms of the specific characteristics being considered. In the first study we

focus on ethnicity, which we denote by means of names that are typically Han Chinese and distinctively Mongolian, Tibetan, and Uighur. We find significant differences in the callback rates by ethnicity and that these differences vary systematically across ethnic groups. Not all firms discriminate – approximately half treat all candidates equally. State-owned firms are significantly less likely than privately‐owned firms to discriminate against minorities. The second study explores how both gender and facial attractiveness affect job candidates' chances of obtaining interviews. It examines how discrimination based on these attributes varies over occupation, location, and firms' ownership type and size. We find sizable differences in the interview callback rates of attractive and unattractive job candidates. Job candidates with unattractive faces need to put in substantially more applications than their attractive counterparts to obtain the same number of interview callbacks.

The third study, which focuses on women’s marital and employment status, finds no evidence of discrimination based on either unemployment status or marital status in the hiring practices of the firms who advertise their job openings on China’s main Internet job boards. There is, however, clear evidence that HR managers are carefully reading resumes and making distinctions between the desirable and undesirable characteristics of applicants.

About Margaret Maurer-Fazio: Maurer-Fazio is the Betty Doran Stangle Professor of Applied Economics at Bates College. She is also a Research Fellow at the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA)in Bonn, Germany. She holds a Ph.D. in economics from the University of Pittsburgh.

Date: Nov, 2nd, 2015

Time: 16:10-17:30 PM

Location: Room 608, Academic Hall, CUFE