@article{b5b93ef94bd843e7becb9107ca30207e,
title = "The Disability Employment Puzzle: A Field Experiment on Employer Hiring Behavior",
abstract = "The authors investigate potential discrimination against people with disabilities through a field experiment that sent job applications to 6,016 accounting positions for which the applicants{\textquoteright} disabilities are unlikely to affect productivity. One-third of the cover letters disclosed that the applicant had a spinal cord injury, one-third disclosed the presence of Asperger{\textquoteright}s syndrome, and one-third did not mention disability. The disability applications received 26% fewer expressions of employer interest. This gap was concentrated among experienced applicants and small private companies that are not covered by the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA). Tests suggest possible positive effects of the ADA, but not of state laws, in reducing the disability gap. Results indicate there may be substantial room for employer and policy initiatives to improve employment opportunities for people with disabilities.",
keywords = "disability, discrimination, field experiment, job search, labor and employment law",
author = "Mason Ameri and Lisa Schur and Meera Adya and Bentley, {F. Scott} and Patrick McKay and Douglas Kruse",
note = "Funding Information: *MASON AMERI is a Postdoctoral Fellow at Rutgers University. LISA SCHUR is a Professor at Rutgers University. MEERA ADYA is a Research Director at Syracuse University. F. SCOTT BENTLEY is an Assistant Professor at Binghamton University. PATRICK MCKAY is a Professor at Rutgers University. DOUGLAS KRUSE is a Distinguished Professor at Rutgers University and a Researcher with the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER) and the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA). Presented at the NBER Summer Institute, Law and Economics, Cambridge, Massachusetts, July 24, 2015; the Labor and Employment Relations Association (LERA) conference, Boston, Massachusetts, January 5, 2015; and the Academy of Management conference, Vancouver, Canada, August 11, 2015. This article benefited from useful comments by Paul Oyer, David Neumark, Christine Jolls, Hank Farber, Patrick Button, Ingrid Fulmer, Barbara Lee, Bill Rodgers, and other session participants. Marianne Bertrand provided useful advice on the IRB application. Elena Koufos and Kristen Sullivan provided excellent research assistance. Initial work on developing this project was funded by the National Institute on Disability and Rehabilitation Research, Demand-Side Employment Placement Models Projects, Grant No. H133A060033. Data collection was funded by Schur{\textquoteright}s and Kruse{\textquoteright}s research accounts at Rutgers. All study procedures were approved in advance by the Rutgers IRB, protocol #E13-606. This randomized control trial was registered in the American Economic Association Registry under trial number AEARCTR-0000830. An online Appendix is available at http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/suppl/10.1177/0019793917717474. Additional results and copies of computer programs used to generate the results presented in the article are available from Douglas Kruse at kruse@smlr.rutgers.edu. Publisher Copyright: {\textcopyright} 2017, {\textcopyright} The Author(s) 2017.",
year = "2018",
month = mar,
day = "1",
doi = "10.1177/0019793917717474",
language = "English (US)",
volume = "71",
pages = "329--364",
journal = "ILR Review",
issn = "0019-7939",
publisher = "Cornell University",
number = "2",
}