American Economic Journal:
Economic Policy
ISSN 1945-7731 (Print) | ISSN 1945-774X (Online)
How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-to-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes
American Economic Journal: Economic Policy
vol. 16,
no. 4, November 2024
(pp. 254–79)
Abstract
We test for labor market discrimination based on an understudied characteristic: name fluency. Analysis of recent economics PhD job candidates indicates that name difficulty is negatively related to the probability of landing an academic or tenure-track position and research productivity of initial institutional placement. Discrimination due to name fluency is also found using experimental data from prior audit studies. Within samples of African Americans (Bertrand and Mullainathan 2004) and ethnic immigrants (Oreopoulos 2011), job applicants with less fluent names experience lower callback rates, and name complexity explains roughly between 10 and 50 percent of ethnic name penalties. The results are primarily driven by candidates with weaker résumés, suggesting that cognitive biases may contribute to the penalty of having a difficult-to-pronounce name.Citation
Ge, Qi, and Stephen Wu. 2024. "How Do You Say Your Name? Difficult-to-Pronounce Names and Labor Market Outcomes." American Economic Journal: Economic Policy, 16 (4): 254–79. DOI: 10.1257/pol.20220611Additional Materials
JEL Classification
- A11 Role of Economics; Role of Economists; Market for Economists
- J15 Economics of Minorities, Races, Indigenous Peoples, and Immigrants; Non-labor Discrimination
- J23 Labor Demand
- J44 Professional Labor Markets; Occupational Licensing
- J71 Labor Discrimination
There are no comments for this article.
Login to Comment