Are racial and ethnic minorities disadvantaged in Australia? Evidence from two randomised field experiments

We conduct a large-scale audit discrimination study in Australia, sending 5000 fake resumes to employers in response to online job advertisements. To denote ethnicity, we randomly changed names on the resumes, using them to denote Anglo-Saxon, Italian, Chinese, Middle Eastern, and Indigenous ethnicity. In all cases, we applied for entry-level jobs, and submitted a CV that showed that the candidate had attended high school in Australia. To benchmark our results from this experiment, we conducted a second study, putting the same ethnically identifiable names on letters, and sending them to addresses randomly chosen from the telephone book. Recipients of these wrongly-addressed letters had two choices: they could either put the letter in the trash, or write 'return to sender' and post it back. We then test how the results from this experiment compare with those from the job application experiment.

Note: As the findings from this research are preliminary, please do not cite or quote this abstract.

Date & time

Wed 08 Oct 2008, 12.30–2pm

Location

Humanities Conference Room, First Floor, A.D. Hope Bldg #14 (opposite Chifley Library), The Australian National University, Canberra.

Speakers

Andrew Leigh, Alison Booth, Elena Varganova

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