Essays in labor economics : discrimination, productivity and matching.

Summary In the first chapter I show that when minorities work with managers who are more biased against their type, they perform significantly worse on a range of performance indicators. In contrast, they are more productive when working with unbiased managers. This is an empirical fact that reveals a self-fulfilling prophecy that biased managers make minorities less productive and this generates statistical discrimination in company hiring policy. The second chapter I explore how changing the value of a job vacancy by offering free recruiting services to companies affects its job supply. By offering free recruitment services it greatly increases the number of job offers posted on Pôle emploi and generates an increase in permanent job creation. This suggests that active labor market policies targeting the recruitment process of companies can have a substantial added value on the labor market. In the last chapter, it is shown that the Charlie Hebdo attacks caused a net reduction in the job search efforts of minorities compared to the majority. Employers are also reducing their search efforts for minorities, but only for permanent jobs. This decrease is partially offset by an increase in job search efforts by Pôle emploi counselors after the shock, but only in regions where latent discrimination, as measured by the share of local votes for the National Front, is relatively low.