Are standardized language requirements a useful tool to reduce ethnic hiring discrimination? Pairing web-scraped data with a factorial survey experiment.

We combined web-scraped job vacancy data with a factorial survey experiment in Norway to examine whether employers who set standardized language requirements for their vacancies, based on the Common European Framework of Reference for Languages (CEFR) are more prone to hire (fictitious) applicants with different refugee backgrounds. We varied the presence of formal (CEFR certificate) and informal language skill indicators (e.g. spelling), while capturing employers’ anti-immigrant attitudes, to assess whether CEFR-based requirements have the potential to reduce statistical/error discrimination, taste-based discrimination, or both.Results indicated that refugee applicants were seen as most hireable when employers set CEFR-based requirements, and applicants presented a CEFR certificate. There were indications that including CEFR-based requirements may reduce both statistical/error and taste-based discrimination, yet findings warrant replication, e.g. within field experimental designs.We discuss these results in light of several pitfalls associated with introducing CEFR-based requirements that can also pose barriers to labour market integration.