Age Discrimination in Hiring: An Experimental Study in Italy

This paper examines age discrimination in hiring against elderly workers in Italy. By means of a role-game laboratory experiment, we estimated the effect of age and certain important mediating factors, such as job experience and training, on hiring decisions, by considering also social influence and stereotypes. Our findings indicate that age discrimination against older people does exist even when candidates have comparable characteristics. Results suggest that although the Italian population has one of the highest life expectancies worldwide, health stereotypes are the most important determinant of this effect. However, we found that experience and up-to-date training by elderly workers could counterbalance this negative effect.