I am an FWO Postdoctoral Fellow in Labour Economics at Ghent University. My research focuses on measuring and explaining labour market discrimination, for which I rely on experimental methods and meta-analysis. You can read more about me in the eponymous tab or discover my scientific work in the research tab. Links to my socials and blog posts are below.
Computer says 'no': Hiring bias in AI
ChatGPT-related artificial intelligence (AI) seems likely to impact the labour market by making organisational processes, such as personnel selection, more efficient. At the same time, it may also introduce and reinforce bias in these processes. A simulated CV screening task with ChatGPT shows that the chatbot discriminates based on ethnic identity when evaluating job applicants. The experiment shows that we should be careful when using ChatGPT-like AI in selection processes....
The worldwide state of hiring discrimination
Many correspondence audit studies on labour market discrimination have recently been published. My research with Siel Vermeiren and Stijn Baert, which appeared in the January 2023 issue of European Economic Review, synthesises the data from nearly all correspondence audit tests conducted around the world between 2005 and 2020. It thus gives a bird’s-eye view of the extent of hiring discrimination on various grounds of discrimination. How do, for example, age discrimination and ethnic discrimination compare?...
Ethnic labour market discrimination: Taste or statistics?
Recently, there was much talk in Belgium about the inactivity among 25- to 64-year-olds in Belgium with a non-EU27 nationality. With 44.2% of the 25- to 64-year-olds with a non-EU27 nationality neither working nor looking for work, Belgium is at the very back of the European rankings. This level of inactivity is a problem given the intention of the Flemish, Walloon and federal governments to get more people into work. In this blog post, I look at one of the possible explanations for this high level of inactivity on the employers' side, namely hiring discrimination....
Top-ranked selection procedures to hire the best-performing candidate
The holy grail of selection is no longer To hire the top candidate for a job, we require selection procedures that provide a sound assessment of who will perform best. Classic examples of selection procedures include resume screening and job interviews – arguably also the most used selection procedures. But what does the outcome of those procedures tell us about a candidate’s potential? In other words, what predictive value do they have concerning a candidate’s future performance in a given job?...