Manager Ethnicity and Employment Segregation

Using nine years of personnel records from a regional grocery store chain in the United States, this study examines the effect of manager ethnicity on the ethnic composition of employment at the firm’s 73 stores. We estimate separate models with store fixed effects for several departments and job titles at each store. We first compare the rates at which Hispanic and white non-Hispanic managers hire Hispanic employees, and then examine the effects of manager-employee ethnic differences on separations and on transfers between stores. We find significant effects of manager ethnicity on hiring patterns in the four job positions that are in small departments, but not in the two positions in larger departments. Manageremployee ethnic dissimilarity has no significant effects on transfers, and affects rates of employee separations in only one case. * Preliminary draft; comments welcome.