Data and Code for: Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit

Principal Investigator(s): View help for Principal Investigator(s) Amanda Agan, Cornell University; Bo Cowgill, Columbia University: Columbia Business School; Laura Gee, Tufts University

Version: View help for Version V1

Name	File Type	Size	Last Modified
AEJReplicationCode -Oct 2024			10/02/2024 04:48:PM

Project Citation:

Agan, Amanda, Cowgill, Bo, and Gee, Laura. Data and Code for: Salary History and Employer Demand: Evidence from a Two-Sided Audit. Nashville, TN: American Economic Association [publisher], 2025. Ann Arbor, MI: Inter-university Consortium for Political and Social Research [distributor], 2025-02-19. https://doi.org/10.3886/E198726V1

Project Description

Summary: We study how salary disclosures affect employer demand using a field experiment featuring hundreds of recruiters evaluating over 2,000 job applications. We randomize the presence of salary questions and the candidates' disclosures for male and female applicants. Our findings suggest that extra dollars disclosed yield higher salary offers, willingness to pay, and perceptions of outside options by recruiters (all similarly for men and women). Recruiters make negative inferences about the quality and bargaining positions of non-disclosing candidates, though they penalize silent women less.

Scope of Project

Subject Terms: field experiment; statistical discrimination; salary history; recruiting; information disclosure

JEL Classification:
      C93 Field Experiments
      J71 Labor Discrimination
      M51 Personnel Economics: Firm Employment Decisions; Promotions

Geographic Coverage: United States

Time Period(s): 2018 – 2019

Collection Date(s): 2018 – 2019

Universe: Freelance recruiters who replied to an advertisement in 2018 and 2019

Data Type(s): experimental data

Methodology

Response Rate: Of the 307 recruiters who responded to our work request and who were qualified for our job a total of 256 completed our task, for a response rate of 83%.

Sampling: The recruiters in our experiment appeared on LinkedIn and UpWork offering recruiting services (both freelance and full-time), and we directed them through UpWork for the experiment's payroll needs. To be eligible for an invitation into our workforce, recruiters on the platform had to be listed as independent (rather than affiliated with an agency), based in the United States according to their profile and had to have worked previously in real-world recruiting roles for office jobs. We searched on keywords such as: ``recruiter," ``sourcing," ``talent acquisition," ``staffing," and ``human resources." We did this in two waves. Wave 1 took place in the summer of 2018, while wave 2 was executed in late 2019. Over both waves, a list of approximately 20,000 possible recruiters was identified on keywords, then we examined a random sample of approximately 5,000 possible recruiters, and research assistants marked about 1,750 recruiters as qualified, by checking the recruiter's profile for prior real-world experience in hiring or recruiting for non-manual work. We then invited each qualified recruiter charging less than or equal to $100 per hour. Approximately 400 wrote back in response to our inquiry to accept the job offer within the timeframe of our experiment. Most of the remainder did not write back at all; or write back after the experiment was completed. Some of these 400 were included in another study, and as such, are not reported on in this paper. We report on 256 recruiters who were part of this study.

Collection Mode(s): web-based survey

Unit(s) of Observation: Job candidate evaluation by a recruiter

Related Publications

Download this project

Published Versions

V1 [2025-02-19]

Export Metadata

Dublin Core

DDI 2.5

Report a Problem

Found a serious problem with the data, such as disclosure risk or copyrighted content? Let us know.

This material is distributed exactly as it arrived from the data depositor. ICPSR has not checked or processed this material. Users should consult the investigator(s) if further information is desired.