The Black-White Recognition Gap in Award Nominations

• 成果类型: Article
• 署名作者: Rim, Nayoung; Rivera, Roman; Kiss, Andrea; Ba, Bocar
• 署名单位: United States Department of Defense; United States Navy; United States Naval Academy; Columbia University; Carnegie Mellon University; Duke University
• 刊物名称: JOURNAL OF LABOR ECONOMICS
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0734-306X
• DOI: 10.1086/722412
• 发表日期: 2024
• 页码: 1-23
• 关键词: motor-vehicle searches; discrimination theory; racial bias; police; GENDER; RACE; cop

摘要

There is evidence showing racial bias in firms' hiring decisions, but less is known about bias in career recognition. We construct a dataset from the second-largest US police department to estimate the Black-white gap in award nominations. Leveraging institutional features, we find that white supervisors are less likely to nominate Black officers conditional on work performance. This appears to be driven by supervisor bias in advocacy decisions rather than statistical discrimination. Given the reliance on subjective evaluations for promotions in many organizations, our findings have important implications for the Black-white promotion gap and the lack of diversity in upper-management positions.