Just Cause Protection Under Manager Discrimination
研究了正当理由解雇保护政策在管理者存在偏好歧视时的效果，利用纽约市2021年快餐业法律和合成双重差分法，未发现对黑人或女性等群体的歧视证据，但发现对年轻工人的筛选歧视。
Just cause policies aim to discourage the arbitrary firing of employees. Recent efforts at passing such laws in the United States have been motivated by deterring discrimination. This article presents a framework to study the effects of just cause when managers engage in taste-based discrimination. If managers are motivated by bias, one would expect to see separations of disfavored workers concentrated in the initial probationary period, before workers are covered by the just cause protection. Since probationary periods are a typical feature of protections, the approach is generalizable. The authors test this prediction using New York City’s 2021 just cause law for fast-food employees and a synthetic difference-in-differences design on publicly available data. They do not find results consistent with taste-based discrimination against Black, Hispanic, female, nor older workers, though lack of enforcement or data issues could drive the nulls. Further analysis suggests another mechanism: screening discrimination against younger workers.