•   •   •   •

Download the Paper (547 K, PDF file) - November 1, 2006 Tell a colleague about it. Printing Tips: Select 'print as image' in the Acrobat print dialog if you have trouble printing.

ABSTRACT:
Employee diversity may affect business performance both as a result of customer discrimination and as a result of how members of a group work with each other in teams. We test for both channels with data from more than 800 retail stores employing over 70,000 individuals matched to Census data on the demographics of the community. We find little payoff to matching employee demographics to those of potential customers except when the customers do not speak English. Although age diversity does predict lower sales, diversity of race or gender within the workplace does not significantly or substantially affect sales or sales growth.

SUGGESTED CITATION:
Jonathan Leonard and David I. Levine, "Diversity, Discrimination, and Performance" (November 1, 2006). Institute for Research on Labor and Employment. Institute for Research on Labor and Employment Working Paper Series. Paper iirwps-147-07.
http://repositories.cdlib.org/iir/iirwps/iirwps-147-07