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 the 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.