Managers, Race, National Origin, and Hiring

Workplace Prof Blog, one of the best law blogs out there, reports on an intriguing study regarding managers and hiring. It is the sort of report that raises more questions than it answers but is interesting nonetheless. An excerpt:

The Journal of Labor Economics has an interesting study in its most recent issue (October 2009) about the patterns of hiring that managers of different races exhibit. According to the study, white, Asian, and Hispanic managers tend to hire more white and fewer black employees than do black managers. The article, Laura Giuliano, David I. Levine, and Jonathan Leonard, Manager Race and the Race of New Hires not only documents the pattern but also offers some explanations:

Using more than two years of personnel data from a large U.S. retail chain, the study found that when a black manager in a typical store is replaced by a white, Asian or Hispanic manager, the share of newly hired blacks falls from 21 to 17 percent, and the share of whites hired rises from 60 to 64 percent. The effect is even stronger for stores located in the South, where the replacement of a black manager causes the share of newly hired blacks to fall from 29 to 21 percent. . . .