ISET would like to congratulate resident faculty members Muhammad Asali, Norberto Pignatti and Sophiko Skhirtladze on the publication of their new article, entitled “Employment discrimination in a former Soviet Union Republic: Evidence from a field experiment” and published in the Journal of Comparative Economics. [NOTE: thanks to Elsevier, the paper will be downloadable for free until the 25th of January, clicking on the link provided]
The authors provide the first experimental evidence about ethnic and gender discrimination in the labor market of Georgia. They randomly assign Georgian, non-Georgian, male and female names to similar resumes and apply for jobs as advertised on help-wanted websites in Georgia, finding that gender has no effect on the probability of callback, but a job applicant who is ethnically Georgian is more than twice as likely to be called for a job interview than an equally skilled ethnic non-Georgian (Azerbaijani or Armenian). The authors find no evidence of gender discrimination in callbacks, both within the Georgian group and the non-Georgian group.
For a brief summary, see the blog article by Sophikos Skhirtladze, co-author of the paper.
