Why are the older workers discriminated in hirings?[Pourquoi les seniors sont-ils discriminés à l'embauche?]

The theoretical part of this paper provides the foundations of three statistical discriminations that are specific to the older workers: employers can think that a senior is characterized by (i) a shorter distance to the retirement age, (ii) a larger distance to the technological frontier, and/or (iii) a smaller ability to move from old toward new occupations than a younger worker. In the empirical part of the paper, a controlled experiments is designed in order to test each of these statistical discriminations. We also present a "pure" discrimination equilibrium and a controlled experiments specific to this assumption. Our empirical results, based on data collected in France, support the view that the older worker are discriminated in the hiring process via these 4 channels. This suggests that the French gap in the employment rate of the older workers is partially explained by significant discriminations.