An Empirical Study of Age Discrimination in Norway and Germany

Victoria Buesch (1) , Svenn-Aage Dahl (2) , Dennis Dittrich (3)

1 OTA Private University of Applied Sciences
2 Institute for Research in Economics and Business Administration (SNF)
3 JP Economic Theory

Using a questionnaire and a sample of students and personnel managers we establish the existence of age discrimination in the hiring process in Germany and Norway. As expected, age discrimination is more prominent in Germany where the hiring probability of equally qualified applicants is reduced by about 22 percentage points due to an age differential of 14 years as opposed to only 12 percentage points in Norway. Within both countries the tendency to discriminate does not differ between students and personnel managers and does not depend on the age of the decision maker.

Mots clés: Social Sciences & Humanities

Victoria Buesch, Svenn-Aage Dahl, Dennis Dittrich. An Empirical Study of Age Discrimination in Norway and Germany. Applied Economics, 2009, 41 (05), pp.633-651. ⟨10.1080/00036840601007344⟩. ⟨hal-00582113⟩