How Does Explicit Discrimination in Job Ads Interact with Discrimination in Callbacks? Evidence form a Correspondence Study in Mexico City

Jobs ads often narrow their searches using gender or age requirements. These narrow searches do not rule out the existence of post-application discrimination. We test for such biases using a correspondence experiment in Mexico City. Some job advertisements explicitly discriminated against males, females, asked for beauty or requested a photograph. The experiment consisted on sending fictitious resumes responding to job advertisements with randomized information of the applicants, which included photographs representing three distinct phenotypes: white, mestizo and indigenous. The two forms of discrimination are correlated: explicitly discriminating firms tend to discriminate more against indigenous-looking females and against married females.