Can subsidies paid directly to employers reduce residential discrimination in employment? An assessment based on serial field experiments

Abstract

‘Emplois Francs’ is a new public policy in France that provides financial assistance to companies when they hire a jobseeker living in a disadvantaged neighbourhood. This study evaluates the effect of this policy by using three waves of correspondence tests spaced six months apart to measure discrimination in access to employment based on ethnic origin and place of residence. We find a substantial level of discrimination based on ethnic origin and a lower level of residential discrimination. We find that the programme decreases residential discrimination after six months, but we cannot conclude that the effect is still present 12 months later.

Is disability more discriminatory in hiring than ethnicity, address or gender? Evidence from a multi-criteria correspondence experiment

“…Overall, it finds a level of hiring discrimination due to disability that is at least as important as that on the grounds of ethnicity, but does not find discrimination on the grounds of gender. In France, proof of the absence or of a low level of discrimination on the grounds of living in a priority neighborhood has been found (Challe et al, 2018;Chareyron et al, 2021). For this reason, we expect to find levels of discrimination on the grounds of hearing disability and ethnicity that are similar to each other, but higher than those on the grounds of gender and place of residence.…”

Cream skimming and discrimination in access to medical care: A field experiment

“…A first finding of this study is that there is no evidence of significant ethnic discrimination in access to healthcare. This is different from the labor market or housing market, where the minority candidate generally suffers a penalty of over 20% (Acolin et al, 2016;Chareyron et al, 2022). This could be because physicians are governed by the Hippocratic tradition that focuses on the patient's wellbeing in decision-making (Kesternich et al, 2015).…”

“…Our last contribution is to the growing literature on testing the effectiveness of anti‐discrimination laws (Agan & Starr, 2017; Ameri et al., 2018), incentive schemes (Chareyron et al., 2022) and public service announcements on anti‐discrimination laws (Fang et al., 2019; Murchie et al., 2021), using audit field experiments. In this regard, we provide evidence of the effectiveness of an innovative French initiative that aims to reduce refusal of care to patients with means‐tested health insurance coverage.…”

Cyclical behavior of hiring discrimination: evidence from repeated experiments in France

“…On the other hand, there was a positive gap for the candidate living in a poor neighborhood when the private and public sectors were combined. This gap may be due to the effects of the "Emplois Francs" scheme implemented in France in 2018, an initiative which gave a subsidy to employers when they hired a jobseeker living in a QPV (Challe et al 2020). However, this gap is not significant for either the private or public sector when sector-specific differences are estimated.…”