Prof. Kuhn delivered a virtual lecture entitled What Happens When Employers Can No Longer Discriminate in Job Ads? Evidence from a Chinese Job Board at IESR on 19 May. The seminar was chaired by Prof. Shuaizhang Feng, Dean of IESR and Associate Prof. Sisi Zhang, Vice Dean of IESR.

Prof. Peter Kuhn is a Labor and Personnel Economist with recent research interests in discrimination, turnover costs, China's labor markets, and the role of the internet as a labor market matchmaker. His research has been funded by the NSF, NIH and Ford Foundation, among others. He is a Research Associate of the National Bureau of Economic Research (NBER), the Institute for the Study of Labor (IZA), and the Center for Economic Studies (CES). He currently serves as Co-Editor of The Journal of Labor Economics and sits on the editorial boards of AEJ: Applied, The Industrial and Labor Relations Review and Labour Economics. He is the author of a new textbook on Personnel Economics, published by Oxford University Press.

Prof. Kuhn shared with audience his co-authored paper on what happened when employers’ explicit gender requests were unexpectedly removed from a Chinese job board. His research shows that the removal raised the share of women in call-backs to jobs that previously requested men by 63%, and raised men’s share in jobs that previously requested female by 146%.  The results also show that such ban has a positive impact on pushing the job seekers to break gender stereotypes and apply for various types of jobs. However, it has little impact on gender discrimination from employers and in the labor market.

After the presentation, Prof. Kuhn had exchanges with audience and answered their questions.

IESR invites regularly globally renowned scholars to deliver lectures and share their insights into particular topics.